The dreaded C word CUSTOMS!!!!

It should be 20% VAT + a £13 handling fee - and if the item + postage adds up to more than £135, add on another 5% customs duty. So if it costs £200 including postage, customs should be £63 On the plus side, if it's not in stock you will have quite a long wait - probably 4 months, so that's only £15 a month you need to save up, which is 'do-able' - but yes - it bites!

 

I usually factor in customs fees into whatever doll purchases I'm making outside the UK and EU so I know I can afford the whole thing. If I don't get charged then it's fabulous and I have extra cash and if I do get charged then I've accounted for that already.

I had an incoming Minifee and by really crazy coincidence the customs letter got sent to my cousin in another village and not to me! The only thing we had in common (besides being cousins, which the postal service would never have known!) is that we have the same surname and we live at the same number house, although it's different streets and different villages.

My cousin only realised the letter was meant for me when she bumped into me at work and mentioned a crazy letter she'd had asking for money to release a parcel from Korea that she'd never ordered and that's when I realised it had to be mine because I'd been following the tracking and knew that the parcel was in the depot nearest to me and was awaiting payment of charges. She gave me the letter and I called Parcelforce to pay the charges and make sure the parcel was delivered to me and not to my cousin. On the phone they were insistent that they could only deliver to the address on the parcel and wouldn't change the address without me paying extra and I wasn't going to pay extra to have them deliver my parcel to the right address when I'd already paid shipping in full!

Obviously I would never have given Fairyland my cousin's address instead of my own and Parcelforce refused to tell me which address was on the parcel for 'data protection reasons', so I had to recite my own address over the phone and they confirmed that the address on the parcel was mine all along and they couldn't explain how my customs letter had been sent to the wrong person!

To this day I have no idea how that mistake was made, but I've never had it happen since!

 

i didnt get any charge for my pukifee im in the uk you might get away with it too

 

Sometimes companies mark down, even if they say they won't! Canada also has notoriously high customs fees and even though the Bluefairy website said "don't ask us to mark down," when my doll got here, I was astounded to see that I wasnt charged tax on my $400 purchase. When I got home, I saw why - they had marked it as $40! Sometimes you might get a pleasant little surprise that way

 

You don't want to live in Germany. We have to pay 25% of the total amount including the shipping costs. Yes, we have to pay fees for the shipping costs...

I have two dolls waiting at the customs Office for me. The cost me 880€ which will cause a custom fee of 220€. Imagine how many dolls I could buy with that...

And it doesn't help to underdeclare anything, they never believe what it written on the package and they do research on the internet to find out what the items cost...

 

Hmm the only dolls I remember what I paid for are two pukifees but in two separate packages. I had to pay around $14 in custom fees both times and I'm pretty sure they were both marked down to $60 or something. So I guess we pay around 25% here in Sweden.

And I dont mind it, I'm just glad I dont have to pay 25% of what they really cost!

 

I feel kind of guilty admitting this now, but in Australia we don't have to pay customs fees until the item is valued at over $1000.

 

Yup. They also demand "proof of payment". A useful bit of information I got from someone who works in import&export is that an e-mail from the company saying "Thank you for your payment of ${whatever} for your order #{order number}" legally counts as such proof, so if the company were to send you an e-mail like that, customs would have to accept whichever amount they state on the package and in the e-mail. Making dolls takes forever, a price on the internet right now doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility for events, discounts and other things.

 

Oh, that's not just in Germany. Try Belgium... I don't like companies marking my stuff down, because they usually do it in such a way that customs don't believe that the price can be correct. Anything that comes in a box of a certain size (say, larger than a doll head) is invariably regarded as 'suspicious' and gets billed plenty. Customs demand proof of payment, the mail charges for handling and paperwork, and yay, I get bills that vary between 32 and 120 euros. The last package I received was two pairs of Feeple65 hands. Fairyland wrapped them VERY VERY VERY well in a huge box. I had to pay some 32 euros in customs and handling fees -_-. For two pairs of hands.

Heads slip through sometimes. I also had one SD body flying through without fees - I still don't know how that happened! But apart from that, whether the company puts a low price on my box, or even a correct price on a large box, or marks the package as a gift... I always get to pay plenty extra .

 

Here in Greece, customs aren't that crazy. Most of the things I've ordered have slipped through, especially when they're marked down to around 100-150. I guess they're surprised by the size of the box, but when it writes "dolls" on the front, they don't question the value. So far in these two - close to three - years I've been in the hobby, I've been hit by customs twice (and my friend Soenatte has been hit twice too). My first time was with my IOS Anos head that I had to pay 50 euro and then my DD Erica who I paid 70 euro for. My friend paid for her IOS Chaos and for her DD Momo, but we were prepared for her Momo because it's common knowledge that anything sent by Volks directly is hit by customs.

From my understanding, the fees are calculated at about 25% of the items excludding shipping, but for my Erica, the fees were a little more than 25%, so I'm not sure if there's anything else I'm missing.
I guess, our customs aren't very bad here, I'm glad for that to be honest )': I always fear about them, they're just such a waste of money that could be spent on other dolls / doll stuff TTATT)/

 

Lots of our money is going to German customs!
My last tiny box went through with no problem, but the company maked the price to 40 €.
I was really prepared for this one: I called the customs office even before I ordered. To my suprise they told me that I will only need to pay 19%, if my box comes from South Korea and the good is produced there. (It is called "Freihandelsabkommen" for Korea since 2011, maybe if your are from Germany you want to check this.) I will know what happens when my Minifee gets here.

 

Actually, you've got to be careful with that: Layaway notices look the same way, but they WILL look online and check the real, full price. They don't care what the company says! (at least that's happened to people I know, not only with dolls)
I am really afraid about what I'll have to pay for my most recent order which amounted to 980$ (but it hasn't even been fully paid yet, so I've got time to mentally prepare myself for the fees.)

Also, I hate how they check out every last bit of an order sometimes... I mean, for pete's sake, I am about to give them LOTS of money .... and if the package is not marked down, I am not even hiding anything (and I am not doing that on purpose with newly purchased dolls, it's all the company's doing)... so stop taking away the joy I will experience seeing my doll the first time. I want to do that at home, and not in an awful looking office with several persons present.

 

Dutch customs is similar to Germany's. Anything above €22 (including shipping) will be taxed, and with gifts it's everything above €45 (shipping included).
The tax you'll have to pay is 21% VAT, + custom fees, + an additional fees depending on the shipping method (for EMS it's €17,50).

What I really dislike is that when you sell something professionally, you also have to pay 21% VAT, which means that I have to up my prices to still be able to get a small profit. I don't know why the Dutch government decided on this, but this creates an unfair advantage for my colleagues in other parts of the world.

 

So far my most "interesting" customs experience was paying 250$ (not joking) in custom fees for my Ringdoll Wolf...Fees in Sweden are 25% of the dolls price including shipping.... plus an aditional 15$ fee for custom handling the package. You will sometimes get a note sent asking you to provide information about the packages content as well as proof of what you paid for the items. That's the rules so I'm not complaining, though the 250$ fee hurt to put it mildly

 

I think it's a Europe thing ... it's meant to discourage buying cheap goods from who-knows-where, hoping to boost the respective national economy. What it actually does is make life harder for people who like things they couldn't freaking buy in their own country even if they wanted to Good thinking, politics.

Kazegoroshi, I've never tried the e-mail version - I might have to for a certain split, because I didn't pay for the whole shebang so bank statements won't be any help there. The info comes from someone who deals with customs at work on a day-to-day basis and knows for a fact they're legally not allowed to question an official statement from a company (even if it comes in e-mail form) that clearly states the amount of money paid for a parcel that is marked the same. (Prices on websites nonwithstanding, they are simply unable to judge whether goods are first quality or something worth less than the full retail price, consequently they're legally obliged to take the producer's word for it.)

 

Really? Wow... I feel kinda bad for those I know that had really bad custom experiences!! So I guess they shouldn't have let customs bully them into paying more than what the company declared. But one of them got even threatened with a lawsuit - so she paid everything.
Thank you for sharing this information!! (and btw I really wish the certain split would just slip through customs...)

 

This is the problem with laws in general. I'm sure that in most cases, most laws work pretty well, but when dealing with a less common scenario, suddenly many rules work against you.

Like having to pay 21% vat as a salesman. Most of the time, this works fine. It's just the regular VAT everyone in our country has to pay and it's what funds our government's expenses. It becomes a problem when your business only has competition outside of the EU and most of your customers are ALSÖ from outside the EU. Because suddenly you can't make as much profit as your colleague, unless you really crank up your asking prices and that would scare away customers.

The problem is that you wouldn't be able to create additional rules for each exception, as the entire system would get cluttered. So, we're dealing with an imperfect law that usually works well.

 

Holland is 30%! I do not buy a doll if they wouldn't mark down. I know it is forbidden but I do not have the money for custom costs. And IF I had it,I would rather buy doll clothing.

 

No prob, always glad to help! It's still no guarantee that a cranky customs guy won't start bending the law the way he wants it to be ... and since they're in the position to push us around (being the ones holding our dollies hostage), it can still be more trouble than it's worth to try and make them play by the rules. So if any of them would decide to kick up a fuss, I'd rather comply and pay up just so there won't be even more trouble the next time.

Regarding the split in question - it's next to impossible for anything to slip through, my office is pretty picky, but I know which of the officers is the nicest and they're usually happy with whatever extra paperwork I can provide for them, so I'm fairly confident they won't cause more trouble than necessary.