As we've discussed many times on this forum, people's experiences of US->Europe post varies considerably, especially with respect to timescales and reliability. Personally, I've always gone for the $1.99 with LE and generally get them in around 12 days (one arrived this morning) and have never had a single one opened by customs or go missing. I'm quite patient with deliveries, so I don't mind a couple of weeks wait. But then other people have had a much more problematic experience (Ramsey, for example).

Is the DHL charge predictable - i.e. can we tell what it will be, in order to factor it into the price before placing an order? Normally I order upto 4 titles from LE, and use $1.99, but if I was to order say 10 discs, I may consider DHL. You mention that you've only been taxed once out of three times - what have other people found to be the "hit rate"?

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Suppliers invoice value: £18.93
Freight value: £17.73
Value for customs duty purposes = £36.66
customs duty rate 2.6%
Customs duty payable £0.95
VAT adjustment £5.75
Value for VAT purposes = £43.36
VAT £7.58
Admin fee £1.25
TOTAL PAYABLE = £9.78

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I still sometimes order from Gamelink because they have free shipping when you order for $150 or more and they use FedEx. Nothing beats FedEx of course.

Btw, I've never had to pay import and tax when ordering from Laseredge and Gamelink, that's why these two are my favorite companies to order from.

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Adult DVD Now ship via UPS in a document-type pack, no boxes and no apparent declaration of value on the packaging. $17.99 for up to four discs to the UK, though it jumps extremely sharply to $34.99 for more.

I've only had DHL delivery a couple of times before, and once was from inside the EU so there wouldn't be duty or VAT to pay anyway, but from a rough, highly unscientific survey DHL seems to be a slightly dearer carrier.

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yeah i read your post on DVD now the other week and thought to myself "ahh, i probably don't need them, i have my own methods of secure delivery!"

maybe i'll look into them

Thanks

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I think the problem here is not that the readers here are unaware of the value of goods which may incur duty, but rather the unpredictability of couriers in applying charges. This is in part down to whether or not the vendor makes an accurate declaration of the value of the goods being shipped.

Also, please turn off caps lock! Thanks.

Edited for spelling.

Edited by - Gabriel Nine on 6/18/2003 4:41:49 PM

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Lasersedge stated the value as $29.95 - so basically i could ask them to lower the value to $25 and i should get away scott free? (as that would obviously be worth less than £18)

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