UKC

A word of warning:

Do not order from Rope-Master to the UK. It's only on getting a £47.80 import charge from FedEx that I realise:

1) RM are based in Poland

2) Their small print makes me liable for import fees that are not advertised anywhere.

Grrr...

In reply to C Witter:

I think you can get away without the charge if you order below a certain amount. I ordered some alpine draws a while ago and didn't get charged.

It is annoying and not well advertised anywhere on the website. I know someone who did a massive order of Totem's because of how cheap they were and got absolutely destroyed by the import fees.

In reply to slawrence1001:

It's very frustrating. I've ended up paying it, as I can't deal with the stress, but definitely recommending everyone gives a swerve to a company that is deliberately opaque about the real costs you will incur.

In reply to C Witter:

"there will be no downside to Brexit at all, and considerable upsides." David Davis, 2016.

Rope-master may indeed be less than open with the likelihood of import charges, but we all know which deceitful individuals are really responsible for us ending up with such a fiasco .

In reply to john arran:

I was also tempted to moan about the deeply reactionary Brexit, despite being absolutely not a fan of the deeply reactionary EU project. But, I was too weary and jaded to bother.

In reply to C Witter:

I understand your frustration, but I think it would be fairer to blame Brexit or just kick yourself for not looking more carefully at prices that maybe should have seemed too good to be true.

I just went to the website and every step of the ordering process, from the original product page onwards showed this text, with a link to the terms and conditions:

"Price does not include any import charges. To find out more check our terms & conditions."

It wasn't hidden away at the bottom of the page, or in a less prominent font than the rest of the info and they'd bolded key parts of it. I don't think they're being deliberately deceptive. They've obviously been around for a while, the second Google result when I looked for them was a UKC forum post from a few years ago, so they're not fly-by-night scammers setting up new websites regularly when people rumble them. They just seem to be a legit Polish company that's willing to ship internationally but doesn't deal with the import taxes themselves.

It's not a UK website and it doesn't pretend to be. The prices don't default to pounds, there's a popup when you first visit saying they've detected you're in the UK and asking whether you want them to convert the prices.

Presumably you would have liked them to calculate the import taxes required, display them to you and take payment for them but as far as I can make out, that's a fairly non-trivial process that probably isn't worthwhile for a foreign company unless they're doing a lot of trade with the UK.

In reply to Luke90:

Yep, nailed it.

Worth noting also that UK residents have always been liable for these charges when receiving goods from non-EU countries, too. E.g. I wouldn't expect a US website to be calculating UK import costs and processing them for me.

In reply to C Witter:

I guess it's going to suprise you to know that we (companies exporting from the EU to Great Britain) don't actually know what the charges will be either, all we know is VAT will be levied, duty may be applicable and the carrier will charge you for acting as the customs agent and a credit institution.

Until HM customs make a valuation then it's anyone's guess and depends on the day rate amongst other things.

In reply to jimtitt:

I think it's called 'taking back control'.

In reply to Luke90:

Fair: I should have been more careful. I didn't think, though, that "Rope Master" was a Polish company... somehow it just didn't ring that way with me 🤔

Also, it didn't do currency conversion when I used it: it just appeared in pounds. Not sure why.

I do appreciate the time you've put into trying to show that it was my fault after all, though. Screen shot and everything: a thorough puncturing of my moan. I will just go and lick my wounds quietly.

In reply to jimtitt:

It does surprise me, yes. It's bizarre that a system can be so opaque that no one knows what charges will be levied. It makes the company position more justifiable, but I've never encounter this problem before. Perhaps it was just because it was a larger order and I got over the threshold for charges. Will stick to R+R and Needlesports from now on...

In reply to C Witter:

It is interesting how we now so blithely tap our credit/debit card details into our phones/ computers without much thought of who is receiving these details. I have done it myself, your experience is a wake up call. I hope you enjoy your nice new ropes.

In reply to C Witter:

I may have overdone it a bit! Sorry. If it helps at all, my intent was to defend the company and have a pop at Brexit rather than to make you feel any worse about an already infuriating situation.

In reply to Luke90:

Fair enough. Thanks for the clarification, it makes me feel a little bit less hard done by and annoyed at myself

In reply to C Witter:

It can be done but basically only if the exporter is paying it all upfront, the biggest hassle is while we have a customs code for the product issued in our country (or by wherever it came from) that doesn't mean another country may have a different interpretation and depending on the trade agreement the product then gets a different tarif. Finding out is a time-consuming hassle (I've resorted to phoning the customs in Barbados for example). What the couriers collection charge is will vary and believe it or not one doesn't often know who the destination courier is. And then there's the week or so processing during which time the currency changes in value. It's mind-numbing work for nothing!

In reply to jimtitt:

It sounds incredibly frustrating... I'm sort of relieved to find out I'm not alone in being frustrated and perplexed... Good luck!

In reply to Luke90:

I looked at them when considering buying a new helmet last year, and was aware they were Polish. Agree that it wasn't really hidden, at least wasn't when I looked. 

In reply to C Witter:

I ordered something on 29th December from the UK version of a company website. Paid in Sterling, postage says free international shipping with a list of expected times for various countries - UK is 8-12 business days.

But it does state: "Import duties, taxes, and charges are included in the item price or shipping charges. The buyer needn’t be responsible for these charges"

Tracking on the order has a nice history where it's clearly been shipped from China, was last noted as being on a plane and is currently delayed somewhere! I'd've thought the company would have had a European dist centre somewhere, but seems not.

TrustPilot reviews of the company seem dire, but I tend to think that only the upset ones leave reviews - there's (hopefully) loads more that are pleased with the products and haven't bothered to review.

In reply to jimtitt:

I distribute books which should be duty free in many countries or at least a minimal amount. However, most EU countries seem to just slap a full VAT/Import fee on the items, plus the handling charge and god help the customer tries to claim it back (never mind the vendor). A bit of collective punishment for Brexit I think.

Tim

In reply to C Witter:

I know. It's almost like we need some kind of shared agreement between countries in Europe to remove these hurdles! The sort of convenient club that once in, you would have to be mad to voluntarily give up access to.

In the last week I've ordered coffee from the Netherlands, a baby monitor from Denmark and clothes from Germany (all to France) without a hitch or hidden charge. On the other hand some of the household name brands that my company owns have just given up shipping to the UK as it's not worth the agro and negative publicity as so many people's first reaction is to blame the company for a situation beyond their control. 

In reply to C Witter:

Depends on the cost and if it goes past a threshold -- £135, none of this is rope master fault. Sometimes it helps to break into separate orders a few days apart if you can keep below 135.

The cost can be eye watering though, I thought I was being really clever by ordering a caving suit from Italy (AV Holloch) at about £195 and doing it via Amazon fulfillment as I thought the Amazon price would be the price and they'd deal with anything. Nope, got hit for £87 or something  costs to have it released from DHL and customs holding. 

Edit: for some seplling correction 

In reply to timparkin:

We do a lot of business via eBay to the EU. eBay automatically collects VAT & import duty on behalf of the EU states and charges the customer this up front so they won't have any extra charges to pay. We regularly get customers complaining that they've been charged import VAT etc. by their country's Customs, on top of the import VAT collected by eBay! Germany and Ireland seem especially good at doing this. We can only tell customers to complain to their local Customs.

In reply to CantClimbTom:

Amazon's terms and conditions for sellers state that all customs fees must be paid up front, the customer should not have to pay any extra on receipt of the goods. You can complain to Amazon if this hasn't happened.

In reply to owlart:

Bother. I didn't know that, I'll know for next time. Thanks!

It was a small independent/specialist seller via Amazon back in Aug last year and they probably didn't make much money on it.

I think they might not even have known as the "blackmail" request sent to me from DHL by text message. The damn thing even finally arrived the day after I got back from the trip I originally needed it for, just to add insult to injury 

In reply to C Witter:

I havent ordered anything from Europe since Brexit but I have ordered fairly regularly from the US.

It is possible to check what the import duty should be on the gov.uk website before ordering. VAT is fairly standard but I thought it should be charged by the vendor at the point of order for EU retailers.

The only unknown is the charge from the courier for collecting the fees and that can vary from fairly  reasonable to blatant robbery.

In reply to timjones:

You're wrong about VAT when exporting outside the EU. Goods sold for export from the EU incur zero tax (vat) in the country of sale, with local tax (in our case 20% UK vat) applied by customs when it enters the destination country. *

Agree on the other points. Only variability is what exchange rate customs use for calculating the £ value of your order before applying charges (but with stable exchange rates there isn't usually a huge amount of unpredictability)

* Although UK imports from the EU under a certain value (I think £130?) are exempt from both import duty and vat. 

In reply to jimtitt:

yes and no, the classification/tarif codes are more or less standardized (CN codes in EU) and there are generally mappings between the different trade-groups codes. The problem is, that country of manufacture (or source) needs to be used together with the classification, in order to know What kind of rules the receiving country happens to have. While this is certainly doable, building it in a website calculator for all possible destinations generally is not worth the effort. A lot easier to just inform that If going outside the trade union, the recipient will be responsible of all the additional taxes and handling fees… heck, it was even problematic in the early days of Finland joining the EU…

In reply to HeMa:

They are indeed harmonised but my experience has shown that one countries idea of sporting goods is anothers idea of safety equipment and yet anothers miscellaneous items of iron and steel!

In reply to C Witter:

Don't think it's been mentioned anywhere on here yet, but the reason companies like tradeinn and the other oversears climbing sites, dont incur VAT etc when you order, is because if you do a lot of trade with the UK you're meant to register for VAT here, and pay it when you sell the item to someone instead of the VAT you would charge in your country. 

For some reason Ropemaster heavily advertise to the UK, BUT haven't registered for VAT so that's why everything appears so cheap to us, because they haven't added the VAT at their end, which they are supposed to do. Unfortunately when it get's here not only do you usually have to pay the VAT but there's usually an admin fee on top. 
 

In reply to Donotello:

Are they supposed to do it? Why is a Polish site supposed to register with the UK government? That seems like a bit of a narrow view of the world. Plenty of reputable UK outdoor retailers will happily post internationally with the same "we're not responsible for the taxes" disclaimer (probably much more buried in the small print). Are they all cowboys unless they register with every country they post to as well?

Surely registering for UK VAT is an optional convenience they could choose to offer their customers rather than something they're in the wrong for not doing.

In reply to Luke90:

Exactly this. But you know, that’s what “we” voted for. IIRC the OP is a Brexit proponent. Good to see they are now learning the consequences. 
 

(apologies in advance if I’ve misremembered your political leanings OP)

In reply to Luke90:

No, all business wishing to trade in the UK using ecommerce MUST register for VAT with HMRC and provide VAT returns as well as pay the tax collected for purchases under £135. For purchases over £135 this is not required.

In reply to jimtitt:

It's worth noting that this law is not a direct consequence of Brexit, it was a Euro wide decision and is applied all over. Brexit just made it more complicated and harder to conform on sales to Great Britain.

Some states made a business of selling low-value items from a low-VAT system to ones with higher VAT (Guernsey was the notable one initially then some of the eastern countries). Before ecommerce this wasn't a problem but once that took off and drop-shipping became a thing it led to massive distortion in the market.

In the EU it's easy enough, above a threshhold of sales to another member (for Germany it's €10,000) the VAT is credited automatically by your own tax man and the money shuffled around where it belongs. Removing the UK from the European tax system means we (Euros) have join the UK tax system and provide seperate returns which is an expensive hassle, having one VAT-man on your back is already one too many!

In reply to jimtitt:

It’s not just the EU countries which are tighten up on the e-commerce side of things. Getting climbing gear here in Malaysia is usually expensive and of limited choice. So many of us here use the U.K. online companies and are finding that any goods ordered online are attracting the local duty on the goods. Fortunately it’s around 10% and for low valued items, you don’t pay duty on the carriage. No chance of reclaiming the VAT either if I do a group purchase when visiting family in the U.K. either as that option seems to have gone

In reply to LastBoyScout:

Tracking currently saying it should be delivered this afternoon...

Have to say, I'm pretty impressed by the global tracking log from door to door, considering it seems to involve several entities.

In reply to ianstevens:

No, not in any way a Brexit proponent. I'm not a dribbling imbecile...

In reply to C Witter:

Sorry, my confusion - as you were. In which case sorry to hear about your import fees.

In reply to C Witter:

But you did say somewhere above you were against the EU in it's current, arguably neoliberal, form didn't you?

In reply to C Witter:

Really, but you agreed to small print you did not read.

Possibly time this thread was consigned to the politics dustbin.

In reply to TobyA:

I guess this comment should be more in the Political forum (which I don't visit)... But AFAIK this is indeed 100% what the control you were promised looks like.... You now have all the control on taxes, VAT and so on...

But of course UK might be small enough market, that a lot of companies (that primary deal only with EU countries, or in the states) simply either can't be arsed to deal with UK delivery addresses at all... or add the simple clausal that buyer is responsible of all the additional fees.