Rightstuf asks a Question about EU Shipping

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AUKN Staff
I figured this should get a bit more attention considering Rightstuf is a popular source for anime shopping.

Just recently the website had a restructure and shipping is now different and International customers no longer have to put up with the complications that are required to sign up for the service which is great. Now ShawneK the Industry Representative of Rightstuf (who constantly helps out folks with problems and such on Fandom Post) has asked the community on FP who live in UK and Europe for a possible solution with regards to shipping. Here's what he said:

I'm splitting this off from the normal threads just so it's not buried in the noise.

We currently use a FedEx method to ship products to Canada. This method allows customs pre-clearance and all taxes are collected. So, once it leaves our building, it is delivered, tracked, to the door anywhere in Canada in about 2 days. Pre-cleared of duty and taxes, with nothing further for you to pay. It's a consolidated service, which means it might be held by us a couple of days before that until we reach a certain threshold (or not, depending on volume. We shipped every day during holiday). Still, tracked to your door, pretty reasonably priced. People seem happy with it.

We have been asked to be part of a pilot program that would be similar to this in the EU.

What this means is, we would pre-collect any VAT and the product would be delivered anywhere in the EU within 3 days, tracked to the door.
Cost wouldn't be too very different from the service that we already use, other than VAT pre-collection.

One of the positives for the Canada service is since the taxes were pre-collected, the end customers avoided the handy $10 "let us put out our hand and ask for the tax" fee at the door when packages were delivered. In this product, it would be the same, there would be no COD on the taxes plus fees that I know are levied when the product arrives to you at your home. I understand in the UK, for example, it's about GBP8. I'm not sure in other locations.

There may be a couple of options, we're still working on this. One may be a flat VAT which would be applied anywhere in the EU. The other may be the actual VAT by the country you're in in the EU. I know some countries are higher than others. It depends on how the program is actually structured. And how much we ship into each EU country.

I'm interested in the opinions of those of you in the EU in terms of what you think. VAT is much uglier than taxing here in the US/Canada, with the cost of the VAT often stacked upon shipping, product, and so on.

Anyway, I look forward to your input. Our new system would support this, unlike the old, in terms of our ability to do the work. But to make it happen, we would need to have increased volume to the EU, as we would have to meet weight targets. So we might have to hold product and ship once a week or something. But it would still likely get to you faster than the current mail consolidator method, and again, tracked to your door.

Look forward to your input. Thank you for your consideration.
DLK
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Some of us AUKN folks who are on Fandom Post (Elaniel, Just Passing through and myself) are up for the idea. So I was wondering about what you guys think of it.

The link to the source is here.
 
I'd definitely be more likely to use their service if they implemented this. If they were also the cheapest overall (vs up1 / amazon / dvdexpress247 etc) then they would pretty much guarantee themselves getting all my US orders.
 
I'll just quote my reply here:

I would definitely be interested in that. Actually, because of who ships the final part of the parcel to the UK, it's £12 on top of the VAT, and causes huge amounts of hold ups as customs like to hold the items for ages.

I take it the shipping costs would be about the same? Would there be the possibility of a free shipping threshold like Canada has too? I would certainly buy a heck of a lot more from you if that was the case. Even if it was a couple hundred dollars.

I don't think doing a flat EU rate would be good as some places are 25% VAT while here in the UK it's 20% VAT.
That is unless you choose the Switzerland rate of only 8%! (Or could ship through Switzerland to keep the rate down?)



I don't think any of us would be opposed to an order amount of like $300 to have free shipping and pre-pay VAT. I would happily bulk place my orders to take advantage of this sort of thing.
 
This sounds exactly like what Amazon US do for in-stock items (i.e. they will charge you postage and collect the customs upfront); but at least in this system the items will be received within 3-4 days - which is a speedy service.
 
Sounds good here. I like UP1 but they are a bunch of jerks when it comes to replacing damaged items. I'd be happy to move to RS for bulk orders.
 
I'd definitely be down for this considering how early TRSI ship items out - especially if it works out cheaper than UP1.

Sinthetic said:
Sounds good here. I like UP1 but they are a bunch of jerks when it comes to replacing damaged items. I'd be happy to move to RS for bulk orders.
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Really? Off the top of my head I've had to send back a damaged artbox as well as Sankarea due to having a damaged disc, and both times they were fine with it.
 
If they were able to measure up to services provided by Amazon US and UP1USA, I'd certainly give them a go.
 
Sounds good, the 20% VAT is not generally what bothers me, it's the handling fee that gets tacked onto it.

Royal Mail are a little lax on the customs but when I do get hit it's a bit of a farce paying more handling fee compared to VAT due. Parcel Force deciding they need £13.50 to hold my parcel up by 10 days is likewise something I find unacceptable.
 
I liked Elaniel's idea, I tend to buy $200 or so at a time when I'm importing (or else I'll usually aim for something under the threshold on it's own) so it'd be even better if I could get free shipping along with that (or at least some kind of benefit). A $300 threshold for free shipping would probably be okay (I might just end up ordering slightly less often but more at once).

I'd probably also buy more of the special edition stuff from NISA, AoA and so on (as well as Right Stuf company releases) if I could get them at reasonable prices from Right Stuf, since those aren't usually as easy to get on Amazon.com (though UP1 is often okay, it seems).

I suppose the total cost is still going to be the main factor but being able to avoid the annoying handling fees would help with that (I tend to factor them in for any order rather than gamble, which is why Amazon.com often does well).

Elaniel said:
I don't think doing a flat EU rate would be good as some places are 25% VAT while here in the UK it's 20% VAT.
That is unless you choose the Switzerland rate of only 8%! (Or could ship through Switzerland to keep the rate down?)
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I could be wrong but wouldn't Switzerland be outside of the EU and thus subject to import fees? I don't know if they have some sort of special arrangement though and companies seem to use Switzerland as a base presumably because it's easier to avoid fees for imports.

I definitely agree that handling fees are the worst part of importing. I don't mind paying taxes as much since at least it's theoretically going to something worthwhile (like paying my wages, I guess) but with even Royal Mail now being privately owned the handling fees are just corporate robbery.
 
Smeelia said:
I'd probably also buy more of the special edition stuff from NISA, AoA and so on (as well as Right Stuf company releases) if I could get them at reasonable prices from Right Stuf, since those aren't usually as easy to get on Amazon.com (though UP1 is often okay, it seems).
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We'd probably still have to go through UP1 for Aniplex sets though, since Rightstuf only sells them to the US/Canada (sometimes more but not Europe).
Rightstuf said:
Due to licensing and contract restrictions, this product can be sold and shipped to the US and Canada only. This product cannot be shipped to Japan. All sales are final. It may be returned for an exchange if defective, but unfortunately we are unable to offer refunds.
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BlackStrat said:
We'd probably still have to go through UP1 for Aniplex sets though, since Rightstuf only sells them to the US/Canada (sometimes more but not Europe).
Rightstuf said:
Due to licensing and contract restrictions, this product can be sold and shipped to the US and Canada only. This product cannot be shipped to Japan. All sales are final. It may be returned for an exchange if defective, but unfortunately we are unable to offer refunds.
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I think it's still possible. I swear that Rightstuf secretly allows International (non Japan) customers to pick up the sets without any issue.. :?
 
BlackStrat said:
We'd probably still have to go through UP1 for Aniplex sets though, since Rightstuf only sells them to the US/Canada (sometimes more but not Europe).
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Seems weird that Aniplex of America would deliberately make other English-language releases drop features whilst simultaneously making their releases harder to buy internationally. Then again, well thought out strategies seems not to be their forte...
 
Oh that does sound promising - I ended up getting hit every time (no matter who I order from) for customs so this would be really useful
 
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