Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
At The Back => Time Out => Topic started by: gwEm on April 09, 2008, 01:37:26 PM
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i've never been charged by royal mail/parcel force for customs ever... until today - 13.28 for a 30 quid item!!
ridiculous. i likely won't complain though, the amount of stuff i've had posted over the years. for example the other week, i had a £150 steinberger body sent - bigish box - no questions asked.
the item is a steinberger leg rest, and probably fits in an a stout envelope. it must be the least likely item ever to be hit with a charge. oh well.
sorry for rant :)
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It that random £8 (or £13.50 for express parcels) clearance fee that makes it silly on small items
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Yeah, I just got a bill from Fedex, the customs was what I expected, but they've tagged £17 on! For what must have been all of 5 minutes work on their part. When I've already paid for them to ship it in the first place :evil: Why don't they just charge it up front with the shipping? As it is it's like one of the flight price cons that they cracked down on last year.
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Bad timing for this post.... I am awaiting a guitar from the USA.......
Fingers crossed!
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I've got 2 parcels comming from the US, one has a pair of mini humbuckers in it, the other has a set of steinberger gearless tuners. Hope they get here alright. Should have got them both to tape a birthday card to the front. Don't think they can charge for some things if it's a present.
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the admin charges are annoying but easier to swallow on an already expensive parcel. . . its the repeated admin charges on small items that gets really annoying
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Somehow I don't think the employees who do the admin get paid £100 an hour! Perhaps it's very stressful work.
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Pickups arrived with no extra charges. Fingers crossed on the tuners.
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My bill arrived 2 weeks after my guitar.
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Did the guitar come from the USA? If so, how long did it take to get to you? Mine left Miami on April 5th but no sign of it yet.
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Ah... just checked - it cleared customs yesterday morning.
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OK - charges break down for anyone that might be interested:
Guitar plus postage was $613 - which was £318 at PayPal rates.... but that is another story!!
Guy put down $520 for Customs
Charges were
Import Duty - £8.18 = 3%
VAT - £46.19 = 17.5% on the price including postage but excluding the import duty
Parcelforce Clearance Fee = £8.00
So roughly - it will have cost me £380 all in.
Hope this is useful to anyone looking to import a guitar from the USA - will pick it up later and post some pictures
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I've had 2 guitars from Japan, both with around £150 customs charges on each. :(
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anything under £36 can be sent as a gift and is therefore exempt from any customs charges.
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OK - charges break down for anyone that might be interested:
Guitar plus postage was $613 - which was £318 at PayPal rates.... but that is another story!!
Guy put down $520 for Customs
Charges were
Import Duty - £8.18 = 3%
VAT - £46.19 = 17.5% on the price including postage but excluding the import duty
Parcelforce Clearance Fee = £8.00
So roughly - it will have cost me £380 all in.
Hope this is useful to anyone looking to import a guitar from the USA - will pick it up later and post some pictures
Why must we pay VAT on postage? That doesn't make sense, especially when import duty is paid also.
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Because the VAT is applied to landed cost - and no I don't understand the logic either!
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anything under £36 can be sent as a gift and is therefore exempt from any customs charges.
True, provided the seller is prepared to mark it as a gift. If it's merchandise, the limit is £18.
About time they increased those limits, really!
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cr@pola - Got to pick up tuners from post office £13.74 charges on $99 parts :cry:
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That is rough - I just got some Grovers from Hong Kong that were under the £36 limit (marked as GIFT) - think that they were about £16 all in though. I am not 100% sure if they are knock-offs or not but you can't fault the quality, even if they are!
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£178.83 strat neck... just got stung for £42.86 :/
not amused
i wonder what strat-egy (boom boom!) i can use to get a warmoth body over here.
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i tend to recommend allowing 25% extra to avoid shocks... yours is pretty close to that!!!
expensive strat neck at that price.. anything special about it?
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When I got my Edwards, I got no charges at all apart from Parcelforce charging £15 or something. It was lucky because if they'd have asked for VAT, import duty etc. I wouldn't have had the money to give them :lol:
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i tend to recommend allowing 25% extra to avoid shocks... yours is pretty close to that!!!
expensive strat neck at that price.. anything special about it?
yeah, putting together a parts superstrat, and have made some very unlucky ebay purchases. i'm a bit pissed off byy the whole thing to be honest.
the neck is a fender usa, and the price includes shipping by the way. never the less, its bit too much. it has the nut fitted, which is why i was happy to pay a bit more. also it won't be much effort to fit the tuners. anyway, with the customs charges its a right skank, definately.
but thats not all, i brought a really cheap squier to use the body and some of the parts temporarily. anyway, despite being advertised as agathis (not great i know), i pulled it apart the other day and its fu*king ply! felt like smashing the thing right there. i already found i couldn't use the bridge as it wasn't the through body type. about all i can use from it is the scratchplate, some screws and and the neck plate.
about the only thing i got so far which was good value was the tuners.
i'd better like this thing when its done. don't feel in the slightest bit like buying a body right now after all these fu*kups.
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the price is probably fair for a US fender neck - the extra charges are a real shame though
shame about the squier too but you can probably recoup some costs on ebay to go toward a proper body
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If you mark it as a cheap gift and it gets broken then you only get the value you put on it back right?
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yeah, you are pretty much giving up on any insurance if its been marked down in value... but tbh, most postal insurance is next to useless anyway!!
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the price is probably fair for a US fender neck - the extra charges are a real shame though
shame about the squier too but you can probably recoup some costs on ebay to go toward a proper body
yeah, the necks probably a fair price to be fair... its certainally the least effort of all the alternatives.
brought that broken tonelab too. ebay's not been treating me very well lately, just feeling a bit negative about it :)
shouldn't be too bitter i suppose, i've had some great buys in the past... even from the US without customs charges.
edit: if only i can find a nice UK-based body..
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a few that might not be too bad here, certainly for the price
http://www.axesrus.com/acoustic.htm
That £59 natural ash one looks pretty decent to me
depsite the bad website axesrus are pretty good and the customer service is excellent
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a few that might not be too bad here, certainly for the price
http://www.axesrus.com/acoustic.htm
That £59 natural ash one looks pretty decent to me
depsite the bad website axesrus are pretty good and the customer service is excellent
thanks wez, sort of wanted a hardtail though. listening your previous advice, i suppose it might be nice to get a predrilled one too.
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Just be glad you don't live in Denmark. I got charged 25% of the total cost. When you include shipping, that means I payed double the ebay price. But oh well, it was worth it.
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ah, hardtail ones are much harder to find and is going to push the price up for a decent one, they are just not as readily available. warmoth or USACG would be a good option but obviously not UK based
tbh if you are trying to build on a budget i would go with a trem and block it off - just because they are so much easier to find
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ah, hardtail ones are much harder to find and is going to push the price up for a decent one, they are just not as readily available. warmoth or USACG would be a good option but obviously not UK based
tbh if you are trying to build on a budget i would go with a trem and block it off - just because they are so much easier to find
having brought this neck (which had better be amazing now :) ) i feel inclined to wait and do things properly. allparts do a blonde hardtail body for £180, but perhaps then I could go with warmoth and get exactly what i want, since the allparts body will still need routing and drilling.
strange hardtails are so hard to find, i would have thought they'd be a very popular choice.
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aha... found it. have a look here;
http://www.kavanaghcustoms.co.uk/prices.html#bodies
another shoddy website i'm afraid (works better on firefox) but its Uk based, offers hardtails and is pretty cheap
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aha... found it. have a look here;
http://www.kavanaghcustoms.co.uk/prices.html#bodies
another shoddy website i'm afraid (works better on firefox) but its Uk based, offers hardtails and is pretty cheap
nice one wez!
that does actually look really good. massive divert, but since we're here would you say alder or swamp ash for 70s/80s rock/metal?
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i would say heavy ash ;)
i havnt seen any kavanagh stuff so i cant say what it is like - worth checking out though
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aha... found it. have a look here;
http://www.kavanaghcustoms.co.uk/prices.html#bodies
another shoddy website i'm afraid (works better on firefox) but its Uk based, offers hardtails and is pretty cheap
Spent a bit reading through their site, seem like lovely guys, their guitars look great, and their prices are very good.
That RT thing they do is gorgeous, and they say they do custom builds too.
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£178.83 strat neck... just got stung for £42.86 :/
not amused
i wonder what strat-egy (boom boom!) i can use to get a warmoth body over here.
send it to me - a shame you didn't with the neck, my brother is here at the moment (but he leaves Monday), he could have brought it for you. Looks like my next trip will be October
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£178.83 strat neck... just got stung for £42.86 :/
not amused
i wonder what strat-egy (boom boom!) i can use to get a warmoth body over here.
send it to me - a shame you didn't with the neck, my brother is here at the moment (but he leaves Monday), he could have brought it for you. Looks like my next trip will be October
thanks phil, was thinking of it naturally... thought i'd take a chance, having got away with it in the past with USPS Express and a Heyboer transformer, some DiMarzios and the Steinberger body. not this time though! i'll see what kavanagh say about their bodies before getting in touch with warmoth.
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£178.83 strat neck... just got stung for £42.86 :/
not amused
i wonder what strat-egy (boom boom!) i can use to get a warmoth body over here.
:oops: Now I feel guilty for suggesting that eBay shop.
I did say they always put the true value on the declaration though - I had to pay the full monty on the neck and two bodies I've ordered from them.
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£178.83 strat neck... just got stung for £42.86 :/
not amused
i wonder what strat-egy (boom boom!) i can use to get a warmoth body over here.
:oops: Now I feel guilty for suggesting that eBay shop.
forget it man ;) i took a risk and knew what the concequences could be.
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thought i'd take a chance, having got away with it in the past with USPS Express and a Heyboer transformer, some DiMarzios and the Steinberger body. not this time though!
you cant really complain that much can you ;)