custom charges help

O

OMFGLOL

Student Council President
hey, i know a lot of people here import games and such from places like America, myself included. However i would just like to know if anyone knows the maximum price range in which you wont have to worry about encountering custom fees. I ask this because i want to buy persona 4 but i have heard anything around £40 will get you charged with customs.

any help would be much appreicated, thanks! :)
 
£18.

Yep, it's a right bastard. I thought it was going up to over £100 in December but more well informed people have told me otherwise.

::looks around to make sure Voddas isn't here::

We are so overtaxed in this country it's beyond a joke.
 
You'll usually (it's not perfect science) get hit if the total is over £18. Even if they include shipping fees in the total! The actual VAT and duty is not that bad but these days the postal companies charge an arm and a leg for handling the package if you do end up getting caught for duty which makes the whole thing very ugly. I had to pay more than the value of the CD single I bought a while back in these fees. But it was worth it and I couldn't get that particular disc any other way.

Some enterprising companies (like global.yesasia.com and axelmusic.com) will sort you out by shipping the goods to a local office then sending them to you within the UK so you don't have to pay more (their catalogues are limited, however). There are also UK-based import shops which may work out cheaper than importing in a worst case scenario.

At £40 base price I'd expect to be hit for around £15 if it does get caught, very roughly. So you can use that as a guide to make your decision.

Of course you still might not get hit. I ordered a huge coffin-sized box of DVDs six months ago and it sailed through without being noticed at all. Just depends on how busy and how mean they are at a particular time.

R
 
Being honest, i've got Persona 4 pre-ordered myself, have it ordered from Play-Asia. I've ordered plenty from them in the past and have never had any form of import costs to pay ever. I've had both Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix+ and my DS games(Super Robot Taisen W for example) come through without a problem, so if you do plan to import Persona 4, i'd say get it from there.
 
You guys who don't get hit for charges are bloody lucky. I've been hit every single time I've gone over bar a couple of book orders from Amazon USA which went via Germany.

Worst ever was my R1 FLCL set which was £18.12p or something... +£8 for Royal Mail, +17.5% VAT, +whatever other charges they can get away with...
 
They seem to get a sadistic thrill out of hitting anything close to £18 but ignoring ridiculously large things. I have imported actual sacks of kit, the huge DVD box, consoles etc; yet I feel I'm guaranteed to get hit on a single CD or DVD more than anything actually worthwhile. I deliberately try to pack as much into my orders as possible now anyway so I only have to pay one handling charge, rather than splitting it into several just under £18 and being screwed if the exchange rate changes unfavourably during the postage period...

R
 
I've never got customs charges for anything...I just assumed they were something "they" made up to piss on international trading relations. >_>

I've ordered games, shirts, trading card sets, whatever else and never got a charge. =/
 
VG+ are expensive. Play-Asia are often less expensive (I got Wild Arms 5 for around £19-21 and MGS: Essential for around the same from them). Play-Asia are also willing to mark down.
 
Either way, Persona 4 will cost more than I'm willing to pay for a game I won't have the motivation to play for a good few months at least.
 
Back in the £1=$2 days that would be right, but It'll be less than that now the pound's taken a tumble.

As of right now £18 = $27.20
 
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