Shipping to UK

[Dale Ludewig]

I'll be finishing up a mando soon for a customer who lives in England. #I had a REALLY horrible experience with Canadian customs shipping a mandolin up there. #Apparently it had to do with the fact that I declared its value (about $4000)because that's what I'd insured it for. #Has anyone shipped to the UK and what should I be ready for (or fear)? #Any and all suggestions will be welcomed.
Thanks.
Dale Ludewig

[Lee]

I've just made a verbal agreement to sell one of my mandolins to a fellow in the UK. He tells me there' a 10% import duty plus 27% VAT (value added tax). I'm wondering if a private sale like mine must follow the same legalities that a professional builder should follow.

[LouisianaGrey]

It's the customer that pays the import duty and VAT. Import duty varies according to the declared value of the shipment, but they then charge 17.5% VAT on the whole amount including import duty AND shipping! It usually adds up to around an extra 22.5% to 25% on the original cost. If you can ship via US Postal Service then there's a chance that the customer may not have to pay duty. The UK customs check only around a quarter of the parcels that come into the country by regular post.

If you send via UPS or FedEx then they will invariably collect the duty when (sometimes before) they deliver the instrument.

In either case there shouldn't be any problems for the builder, it's the customer who suffers.

[Dale Ludewig]

My concern is that I gave my customer a price. #He's already sent me the deposit and then the balance due on receipt, even though the instrument isn't finished yet, because of the favorable exchange rates right now between the US$ and the UK Pound(sorry, I don't know how to make that symbol on my keyboard). #I told him to go ahead and send the balance due and it would just sit in a savings account until he received the instrument and approved. #He included about $50-$75 for shipping. #Back to my concern- does he know that he might get hit for another 25% or so for VAT, which is exactly what happened with my experience with Canada. #In that case, Customs had the instrument, and my customer didn't have the money to pay for the VAT and wasn't expecting it. #After talking to UPS, I was told that they would ship it back to me, but I would still owe the VAT, or whatever they call it up there, or else it would go into what was described as the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark- the big warehouse where nothing comes out or is lost forever. #That was whether I had it shipped to my customer or shipped back here. #The tax, or whatever you want to call it, was due, no matter where the instrument went, or else Canadian customs would hold it (store it forever). #I finally decided to bite the bullet and pay the customs charge- you can imagine that there was no profit left in that job! #So, I suppose I need to talk to my UK customer and make sure he knows what might happen and risk having him back out of the whole sale (I've got about 80 hours into this instrument,plus material costs), or perhaps he already knows? #He's never mentioned it. #Ah, free trade. #Please no tirades about how screwed up this whole thing is- I've been there and it won't help anyone. #I'm looking for solid advice from people who've been in this shipping/selling position.
Thanks.
Dale Ludewig
www.ludewigmandolins.com

[MarkG]

Hi Dale,

I live in the UK and I regularly have stuff shipped to me from the US. The current import duty rate for mandolins is 3.2% of the consignment value (i.e. cost of instrument plus cost of shipping) and then there's 17.5% VAT to pay on top of that. So, for example, if you sell a mandolin for $1000 and the shipping is an extra $100 the total cost would be:
(1000 + 100) * 1.032 * 1.175 = $1333.86

It is the importer (i.e. your customer) not the exporter( i.e. you) who is responsible for paying the import duty and VAT. If you ship via DHL, UPS or FedEx they will pay the duty and VAT directly to the customs folks and then invoice your customer after delivering the mandolin (the invoice usually arrives in the post about 2 weeks after the package has been delivered). If you ship via US Postal Service, the Royal Mail (the British equivilent of USPS) will inform your customer that he must go to the post office to correct the mandolin and they will not release it until your customer pays them the duty and VAT. The Royal Mail also charge an additional £10 handling fee ontop of the duty and VAT! Often if you ship small items (such as books, CDs etc.) the Royal Mail don't pick up on this, and you end up getting lucky and not being asked to pay the duty and VAT, but I've never got away with this on a large package.

It is up to the sender of a consignment(i.e. you) to declare its value, and this is what the UK customs folks use to calculate the duty and the VAT. It's not uncommon for people to deliberately under-declare the value of goods so that there is less duty to be paid, but I assume that this is probably illegal.

A couple of years ago I bought some red spruce billets for mandolin fronts for a timber supplier in the US. The total cost of the package was about $120, but when they shipped it they declared the value as $900 because they thought the postal service would look after it better if it was more valuable. Unfortunately the Royal Mail wouldn't release the package to me until I paid almost $200 in import duty and VAT!

I hope this helps. Best of luck,
Mark

[Dale Ludewig]

Thanks Mark. That helps.
Dale

[Greenmando]

Isn't "gifts" excluded from VAT?

[Karen Kay]

Our case is a bit different because we shipped a guitar to Spain but the rest is exactly what we encountered. The guy wanted us to severely undervalue the guitar ($500 instead of the 2k it is worth) so he could reduce his "Custom Tax" which values at the insured amount. When we found out what we could be held to we e-mailed him and said, we want the sale price and whatever happens after that is your deal. He agreed and we have yet to hear what transpired (2 weeks ago). It is evidently each country's deal but made for a nervous transaction.
R&K

[Lee]

Karen, so what you're saying is if I sell a $2000 mandolin and ship it to the UK using the post office and insure it for just $200 I can get in trouble with the law?

[Karen Kay]

Not the law but the insurance. If you were the one who had to handle any claim the best you could do is the $200. If we had done this guy the "favor" of underinsuring it so he could save on Custom's Tax and if anything happened to the guitar and if he refused to handle it from his end WE would have been so far up the creek it would have been idiotic. He would have been w/o the guitar and wanted his $$ back. We would have a creamed guitar and $200. Does it seem like a disaster waiting to happen to anyone else? So we told him we would insure it for 1,000 and if anything happened to the guitar, we would handle the claim and give him whatever we recovered but the sale price was in stone and nonrefundable. He agreed and we shipped it Air Parcel Post through USPS. Have not heard from him in 2+ weeks so we guess it is OK.

[sailaway]

re: the mando transportation/customs issue to England: what would happen if your customer in England had a trusted person in America , such as a friend from this list, traveling to England, who might be willing to bring as a carryon luggage the mandolin in question, which then might be forgotten and left at the home of the friend in England for a long time .... in all of the years I have been traveling with instruments (30 +) I have never been questioned about the instrument on entering or leaving the country (aside from being asked to play some bluegrass mando for customs in Seattle....) http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif

[Dale Ludewig]

Well, that's an interesting idea- a friend in the US. I'll run that by him.
Dale

[Lee]

My mandolin shipped without incident to the UK using the ol' Post Office. On the form I wrote "mandolin" and checked off the little box for "gift". Took about 10-days and "sailed through customs". It was insured for merely $200 (one/tenth it's true value).
Small musical instruments are allowed as carry-on luggage in addition to the normal limit. Shoot me an email and I'll return a letter of authorization to you from the U.S. Dept. of Trans., Security Administration.

[Mark Simcox]

Does anyone know if all this also relates to uncompleted instruments ie kits?

[BigJoe]

I ship to the UK on a fairly frequent basis. The shipping charges for UPS is about two hundred bucks. Since it is a foreign delivery, it goes air only. That does help insure less opportunity of damage. However, I've had bad luck with damage to the UK. Maybe one shipment in five gets damaged in some way. THe insurance does pay, but it makes the customer unhappy. I"ve had no better luck with any other carrier.

As to any duties and taxes, I always make that the customers problem. You cannot take care of that with any assurance and when it gets there he has to take care of it anyway. They know what is involved and understand there is a cost for that. Still, with all the extra costs it is cheaper for them to buy in the US with all costs added than to buy a similar product in the UK.

[kmmando]

Do not use UPS. They smashed the neck off a National Tenor guitar I got from Gruhns. It was extremely well packed, but this didn't prevent them wrecking it. I had a hell of a job getting them to pay for the repair.
They also quoted me one cost on the phone, to release another instrument I got from Gruhn, then hiked the total cost up by some £50 and denied they had ever given me a price on the phone.
I've never use them again. Am I alone in this experience?
Kevin Macleod

[Mark Simcox]

Thanks bigjoe and kmmando. You are correct in stating that the cost even when you add shipping and taxes is still cheaper than buying in the uk. You also have much more choice. Just one of the problems of living in "rip off britain"

[Bren]

I have taken a couple of instruments back and forth between Australia and UK, both ways, for delivery to customers in either country while I've been on other business. Customs pay me no more attention than they would to anyone else carrying an instrument. Given that a hand-made instrument does not have a known list price, and in any case could be sold second hand for as little as the seller wishes, customs are in no position to query the value put on it.

I have imported a couple of instruments by courier, fortunately for me, our freight forwarder lumped the bill in with a heap of other high-value work-related stuff. When I asked my work to separate it so I could settle, they said it was more trouble than it was worth, so I got a free import. (eventually passed on to another MC regular.....)

I think most UK residents are aware that they have to pay VAT and duty. It's good of you to remind them but you shouldn't have to pay it yourself, and I'm sure they won't think any worse of you for making it their responsibility - it's normal practice and has to be taken into account when buying anything from abroad.

I've never been sure how a low stated customs value affects insurance. The industry I'm in does it a lot when moving things around, but I think they just take a risk balanced against the certainty of paying high duty. That's OK with heavy engineering products, but not with delicate things like instruments......!