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customs charges aliexpress
 

I have been buying goods off aliexpress all sent by china airmail. After finding a good product, I ordered a large quantity and it was sent by fedex at a cost of $30.

A week after receiving the item, I get a bill from fedex asking for £3 customs and £10.50 admin!

As I'm new to importing, am I expected to pay this, or has the supplier not paid enough postage. He put the value as $30 which is about right. And is the admin fedexes charge or customs?

Sorry for such a noobish question!

The 10.50 Admin is a charge by Fedex for essentially paying your customs duty & using they're quicker system to clear customs.
Naturally, for this they charge a fee.

The fee itself will not change, even if the customs charge is 500GBP.

If the $ value is 30, it generally does not attract VAT or import duties. This an change with the FX rate of course.

If they have sent you a bill, phone FedEx and ask for the break down.

£3 will be split into VAT and Import duties. If under certain amounts though import duties and VAT are written off.

Find out if the duties and VAT paid by EedEx on your behalf are under these amounts, then take that to FedEx and say that VAT and duties should not have been paid on these imports.

Thanks that's what I couldn't understand I've had orders marked for much more and never had anything like this - first time using anything other than china airmail though.

But generally, if you use couriers, like fedex, DHL, etc. and your order goes through customs and incurs any duty or vat charges, you will pay fees to the shipping courier.

Using their services your packages clear customs faster and to do that they automatically pay whatever customs it is. DHL makes you pay the duty+vat before they deliver it to you.

Also, if your previous orders were all marked as Gifts they would never incur any customs charges. However, you cannot keep ordering "gifts" over and over again, all packages sent to your address and to you are put on a file, i.e. if you keep receiving "gifts" you will get flagged to tax & duty evasion, and will be in a world of hurt.

This is all of course applies, if you buy lets say 50x bars of soap and keep ordering the same thing from the same supplier, each time marked as a gift. If you buy 1 tshirt, or something in small quantities from different sellers, it wont be suspicious.

Thanks for the info. I don't mind paying what I should, I just thought paying the supplier $30 in shipping for (in reality $50) worth of goods would have included any such duty etc.

It's annoying its only £3 and I have to pay £10 admin, but you live and learn and I prefer this to holding my parcel until after they've chased me up for payment!

On a side note, I've ordered something low value nearly every month for years off ebay for personal use from china or hong kong which is always marked as gift. I must have a big file already!

DHL charge a lower admin fee for future reference. I also find them faster

Like I said, personal use and low quantities aren't a problem. It's just some people think they're smart and try to abuse the system with "gifts" only later to find themselves in court.

Duty and VAT are not the responsibility of the supplier, this applies globally.

Personally, I find DHL fastest of them all from China and the admin fee's are the lowest.

Re: customs charges aliexpress
 

From my experience with express couriers is that they charge import fee easy.

I guess its how they make their extra cash. There should also be any specific % statistic that the government is requiring by the logistic company. As a result they have to charge a certain % amount of packages. They may also charge 0% VAT and it will get into the statistics a well. But then charge the admin fee and it will go directly to their pockets, this specific case also apply for non express couriers.

Not many packages is actually opened and inspected by express couriers.
When we send goods our customers would never need to pay any customs fee, this after many years of experience in the logistic field.

Re: customs charges aliexpress
 

UK customs will only regard a package as a "gift" if its sent from one private person to another with no commercial involvement. In other words, Aunt Flo took it to the post office herself.

If it appears to originate from a company or is being forwarded by a freight forwarder like MYUS.COM or SHIPITO.COM then thats a red flag.

Better to make it "merchandise" with a declared value which appears to be reasonable for the size of box and its contents.

Re: customs charges aliexpress
 

All my items are declared with a value and are obviously commercial, and I always have to pay customs fees on them. But they are never opened.

Re: customs charges aliexpress
 

..............

Re: customs charges aliexpress
 

That is indeed good luck

Re: customs charges aliexpress
 

If your company is legit with the tax authorities you can write off the brokerage charge as a business expense but not the VAT unless you are registered for VAT. You need to build that into your costs when you order the widgets.

Re: customs charges aliexpress
 

this issue will happen to you for a while but not all the time,maybe 1 from each 25 times

Re: customs charges aliexpress
 

so, how does everyone else get their items in the long run if I'm statistically on thin ice?

Re: customs charges aliexpress
 

The last three packages I had from Fedex they didnt add in the freight charge so I just paid VAT on the declared value which is always less than the freight charge. In fact the last package the VAT was less than their admin charge!