This is a good one!
I'm rarely in when Royal Mail deliver, so I often come home to a little red card on the mat telling me to come down to the sorting office and collect it.
In January I ordered some software on Ebay from a US supplier for $150, or about £75. Postage was $19, or about £10.
Then I came home to find a grey card on the mat. This demanded £21.45 in charges. The duty is merely VAT, at 17.5%, or around £12, so I scratched my head a bit at this.
Down I go to the sorting office. I query the charge, and they shrug and say 'nothing to do with us'. The parcel is presented, plus a sticker on the side, which says that the Royal Mail have added their own 'international handling fee' of £8!?!
And so it proves. A look at their web site reveals that a year ago they imposed this charge -- almost equal to the cost of international parcel post.
Clearly this is a rip-off. They've been paid to deliver the mail. If they want to put a sticker on it, that costs nothing. If they take money for the government, that costs almost nothing either. So the fee is just profit.
Is it really legal for Royal Mail to invent charges of any size, as a ransom demand, on mail for which postage has already been paid? Really? But who can afford lawyers in our country?
I don't much appreciate having to pay Gordon Brown £13.45 out of money which he has already claimed tax on at 46% (22% income tax + 11% 'national insurance' tax + 13% 'employers' -- as if! -- 'national insurance' tax). But Royal Mail are taking the p***.
Interestingly the sticker has two different telephone numbers on it; one is for HMRC about the VAT. But the other, added to the bottom, reads "Queries about contents or handling fee should be referred to Royal Mail International Tel: 08457 740 740". I imagine that HMRC got tired of getting irate phone calls, and insisted on Royal Mail printing this number as well. So they know, and Royal Mail know, that a scam is being perpetrated.
Adam Crozier, the CEO of Royal Mail, who thought this one up, is paid over £1m a year to invent ways to steal from the public like this. I don't know where he lives, but I hope his neighbours make his life hell.
See also:
http://paulm.com/inchoate/2005/04/customs_royal_mail_clearance_scam.html
The regulator is Postcomm. Their website is mainly about referring you to someone else! I've emailed a complaint to Royal Mail, so when they ignore it I can escalate it through their tree of people.
9 comments:
Hey, I just got charged the same. I couldn't find the relevant information on the Royal Mail website though.
I've heard that they are rather unhelpful in handling these complaints but if they didn't give relevant information online, that could be a valid complain and relevant compensation awarded.
I'll have a go at complaining too. Keep us updated with your results!
Thanks for your comment! See my following post about my attempts to complain.
Do give it a go, tho. These greedy swine need to know that we're onto them.
I'd also considered asking my MP to look into it. The trouble is that I'm in Suffolk Coastal, which is John Gummer. He seems to me to be thoroughly past it. He said in my hearing that he was no longer interested in politics, and was quite useless in resolving a problem that I had. I suspect that he is just sucking the lolly dry!
Until Suffolk Coastal conservatives get a new MP, there won't be much use for me doing things.
Chris Mole, the Ipswich MP, tho, seems like a bright spark.
My biggest gripe is how unclear the fee is before you actually pay it. My post master wouldn't let me see the parcel until I paid the fee.
The card didn't outline the fees and listed the handling fee at £1 (which in itself is misleading)
Frustrating, with the fee it's essentially a 50% tax for me.
Worst thing is is that the parcel was purchased using a gift card. Just my luck the parcel was marked as Other instead of Gift.
Oh well.
Regarding the Royal Mail £8 handling charge on international mail where duty and import VAT is due..
This is definitely an attempt by Royal Mail to squeeze more money out of it's customers for basically doing what it's always done (case in point, 3 price increases on postage prices in just over 12 months!). This charge by the way, has doubled in just one year, it was £4 previously. No explanation of the price increase or what the charge is actually for either.
What I suggest is that everyone who reads this thread and is annoyed about having to pay the charge, puts a complaint in writing to Royal Mail head office. If enough people do this, imagine the hassle and cost to Royal Mail in administration and resources to process and reply to all those letters!
That in itself may make then think twice about trying to levy unfair extortionate charges on the public in future.
If the item is a small item or low value and it's not worth paying the £8 charge, consider it sending it back. The cost and hassle for Royal Mail of having to do that would be considerable.
Roger:
Well done! Never give up! Adam Crozier's address is:
Mr Adam Crozier
41 Manor Road
Teddington
Middlesex
TW11 8AA
But for an immediate response from a wonderful lady at the Post Office Head Office - Royal Mail, 148 Old Street, London, EC1V 9HQ
Telephone: 0207-250 2888 Fax:0207-250 2030 -
Try Joanne Robinson, one of the PA's to the Executive. She just sorted out my problem with a redelivery failure in Tonbridge, Kent in 5 minutes flat. My letter, that should have come this morning via my normal postman, will be redelivered, via one of the collections drivers, this afternoon. Apparently, if Joanne says "jump" to a sorting office, they jump.
Joanne, miraculoulsy, appears to live in OUR world, as opposed to the parallel world inhabited by the vast majority of Royal Mail employees!She actually cares about one's silly-arsed problem?! You don't have to go ballistic with her. You can just be normal and polite and: hey presto!
Good luck,
Nick
The correspondent referred to above finally gets his act together and posts:
Briefly, like Roger and others here I got stung for the £8 charge. Since the VAT itself was only £5 or so, I complained to Royal Mail citing by comparison the poundage charged on a £5 postal order as evidence that the charge is excessive. In the reply the told me that:-
"I would like to explain that we recently assessed the costs of providing the customs clearance
service for customers importing goods into the UK by post and discovered that we were operating
this service at a loss. Unfortunately, we can no longer afford to offer any service at a loss and cannot subsidise this activity using another income stream. It is for this reason that our fee has increased to £8.00, which accurately reflects the costs involved".
Because of the reference to an assessment I asked for a copy of the report and after a nonreply repeated my request reminding them of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. They have now told me that my request related to "commercial" matters, for which the Act provides a qualified exemption and are now considering whether my request falls within the exemption (i.e. what excuse they can find for not giving it to me). As Roger observes, the charge cannot be both to cover the costs and at the same time "commercial".
I suspect that they are taking the entire costs of routing all incoming packages to HMRC and dividing it by the number of packages on which duty/VAT is levied. Since all incoming packages are routed through HMRC, the cost of this should be taken from the postage paid by the sender.
For information on making a Freedom of Information Request, see the website of the Information Commissioner's Office at:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/Home/what_we_cover/freedom_of_information.aspx
Be sure to read the bits giving advice to Government Departments too.
The way it was explained to me is that so many international parcels remain uncollected after a specified period of time. The cost of sorting and returning these items has risen phenomenally, to an extent where Royal Mail is making a loss in that division.
As a result, honest customers are paying for those who can't be bothered to pick it up. When confronted with the option to leave my parcel and have Royal Mail send it back to the United States the post master simply said "that's your call"
Higher handling fees in addition to the customs charge will only heighten the number of uncollected parcels after customers see the excessive fine. Especially for smallers items.
It's almost a catch-22 I'd say.
Hi, it's not only the Royal Mail that adds an International handling fee. UPS not only adds an £11 International handling fee but also charge import duty on packages where the value of the goods and carriage is well below the £100 threshold where HMRC waiver the duty as it is less than 10 Euros or £7. The import duty is added to the goods and carriage costs and VAT is then calculated on this total - meaning that UPS not only mark-up the charges by imposing import duty when it should be wavered, but charge more VAT than is actually payable.
Same old story GREEDY GREEDY BASTARDS rip you off as and when they feel like it.
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