The more venerable among you will recall me winning a haiku competition a while back, run by Secret Weapon. Well I finally got around to ordering some bits with my prize voucher, and they turned up yesterday.
I’ll have a proper look at them later, but for now you can see it’s a pile of skulls and some of the washes I’ve been rather interested in. We’ll see if they do what I hope they do when I get some on an orc.
As a side note, this did also illustrate why I seldom order from abroad these days. No fault of Secret Weapon who handled their end perfectly – however, thanks to customs I ended up having to collect it by hand and pay a hair’s breadth under 50% of the value of the goods in extra tax and charges.
What a splendid way to encourage trade.
Quirkworthy 
That’s the killer, being stung on customs. I am really interested in the miniature game ‘This Quars war!’ but I’m afraid the cost will just be to much getting them from America…
People tell me that they are lucky and don’t get the tax. Personally I have been lumbered with it every single time, so either I’m naturally unlucky with this or I’m on some sort of “no-fly” list.
A bag full of skulls? You can take the man out of games workshop but you cant take etc etc
😉
It’s not Customs with the charges bit. It’s the Post Office. Customs charge is a percentage, and not unreasonable. Then the Post Office adds on a flat £8/9 for “paying the customs charge on your behalf”, regardless of the value of the package.
>stream of incoherant swearing about Post Office charges<
Kind of. That’s a technicality. The government have given someone a monopoly to collect this so as far as I’m concerned it’s them and not RM who are at fault here. The sticker that customs puts on lists the whole cost. Breaking it down is somewhere between a feeble excuse and a pointless formality.
If I paid VAT at the normal rate then that would be fair enough. I understand that, and whilst I don’t like paying tax any more than the next person I understand the point of it. But 49.5% is downright unreasonable.
Royal Mail Handling Fee SUCKS !!
Maybe after these US/EU trade negotiations finish in 2014 we might finally be rid of Import Tax on wargaming products by .. 2020.
I am really, really hoping that the new trade negotiations get us somewhere with customs charges.
In the meantime, I will continue to hope and pray that the current lunatic wave of anti-European political campaigning doesn’t lose us the European free trade zone and destroy any hope I have of picking up so many of the gorgeous models coming out of Europe at the moment.
Hehe of course it won’t. Do we refuse to trade with America because they’re not in the EU? No, so I really don’t see the logic behind the fear that Poland will stop trading with us 🙂
Plus you can have bendy bananas again 😉
And cucumbers. Don’t forget the cucumbers.
I can live with the 20% on the value of the goods, albeit I’d obviously prefer not to pay it. but the flat £8 handling fee coupled with the VAT on shipping are both completely unreasonable. The system is in serious need of an overhaul given the increasingly gobal marketplace we consume in. Even something as simple as a straightforward way to pay the VAT on the goods in advance would be a big step forward.
There are several ways they could make it a great deal more efficient and less of a pain, but that’s seldom the way of governments.