I hear throwing Glowforge’s into the harbor is an effective protest against VAT and duty fees.
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Think someone’s made a mistake with your duty?
Had my email as well but my fee is the more expected £709.12 though I think someone else was only charged £690ish but I am putting this down to the dollar rate change!
@glowforge22 yours is obviously a Pro also, I take it? When is yours due? Is it Tuesday 3rd too? Thought ours was a tad pricey mind.
Yes, it’s a Pro. The duty was 691.82 and admin fee of £17.30. So it could be that the declared value on your GF is wrong or they have used the wrong duty rate. Certainly we are paying VAT at 20% but am pretty certain there is also an import duty of around 9% going by the figures. In theory if you have paid too much you should be able to claim it back from HMRC as long as you can prove the correct value/mistake but have never done this myself.
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I think I’ll try to get through to UPS via telephone again tomorrow and query it. Good to know that someone else getting the exact same thing at the exact same time in the UK is paying £140 LESS so I can ask to check. Otherwise, a claim it will have to be. Bliddy typical though. Why can’t things just go smoothly…?!
The commodity code that came with the glowforge and that @Rita has given before attracts an import duty of 4.5%
and the exchange rate is set month to month by HMRC so something is definitely wrong with @tracey_grundy 's payment demand.
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Just to add that’s on top of the VAT @20%
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The duty is added first then VAT is added. But that doesn’t add up unless we are really being ripped off on the exchange rate:
My fee (£691.82 / 20) * 100 = £3459.10
Then -4.5% : (£3459.10 / 104.5) * 100 = £3310.14
The declared value should have been $3473 - $150 (Proofgrade)
So any exchange rate of 3323 / 3310.14 = 1.0039
If you actually do the sums with a duty of around 33% then VAT of 20% you get nearer to an exchange rate of 1.4
Something is seriously wrong here!
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I have recently had a big argument with UPS about overcharging VAT on a Chinese import. I didn’t get anywhere and they stopped replying after about 14 exchanges. I think I will have to raise with with HMRC or my MP.
They add a thing called VAT value adjust to the shipping cost before charging VAT on it. That is supposed to be added to the shipping cost to get it to the UK to standardise the VAT on an import regardless of how far you live from the port but they add it to the door to door shipping cost.
Also if the commercial invoice does not show that shipping cost they add it to the total so you pay VAT twice on shipping.
The exchange rate is given to them by the HMRC so they can’t change that.
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I believe the current HMRC rate is 1.39, so using that figure I would have expected to pay around £66 less in tax if GF didn’t reduce the value by $150! This £66 just about matches 20% of the $478 shipping charge. This is unacceptable! What are GF playing at by not listing the shipping charge is included on the invoice! This on top of the £42 I had to pay for the proofgrade “gift”. Perhaps @dan would care to comment, so far it just seems to be 1 mistake after another.
So by my reckoning is they didn’t reduce the price by the promised $150 and they didn’t declare the price included shipping then thats £91 ($127) extra I have had to pay. Let alone that I had to pay 20% on the $67 shipping cost of the proofgrade and the £11.25 admin charge. So all in an extra £112
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I’m phoning UPS first thing tomorrow to query it but chances are I will have to pay and make a claim. BUT as you say @glowforge22 IF we have all been diddled with GF’s paperwork then added to the £140 overcharge there’s even more they potentially ‘owe’ me too.
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And then of course we get our GF which is missing lots of the features promised 2 years ago, not to mention the air filter or the fact that us Europeans have been at the back of the queue even though they were happy to have our money for the last 2.5 years.
Sorry, had to get that off my chest! To be honest its not just GF being a pain at the moment for me, I seem to be having a run of bad service at the moment from everybody, including a neighbor who is trying to steal the land that gives me vehicle access to my property.
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Can I just ask how much people paid and when. Thinking about it, maybe this might have had something to do with it. I purchased the Pro on 21 November 2015. The total cost was 5649USD which included the air filter and cost of shipping for both the Pro and air filter. Unfortunately there’s no breakdown on my purchase history other than the full prices then the pre-order discounts as a whole so I don’t know what percentage of discount was split between the Pro and and the filter before applying the shipping costs. Does this makes any sense?
That explains it. I paid $4949 total as was in the 30 day campaign. So your declared value is $700 more. So (700 / 1.39) = (£503.60 * 1.045) * 1.20 = £631.51 - £503.60 = £127.91
And of course the brokerage fee goes up by £3.18 due to the higher value!
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Thanks. At least that explains things. So I’m assuming that everyone who has received theirs first has paid the lower customs fees due to the 30-day campaign price being a lower value and the amount I’ve been charged is more than likely the norm (or thereabouts) for anyone else, going forward.
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Hi everyone,
I’m from the UK and ordered in Jan 16. Paid the £40 or so for the PG materials. My Pro unit is arriving on Tuesday and import fees are £820 (inc. £20 for UPS).
I think by the time the filter arrives in a few months import duty would have wounded me in tune of £1000. Mad stuff - hopefully GF as a product cracks out to be everything I hope it is.
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Well my GF Pro has been delivered, got the UPS guy to mark box as damaged due to one handle missing and 2 deep digs in the box. The commercial invoice was soaking wet as well but on opening the box all looks good so far, I can still see fluid in the tube and there is no signs of the insides being wet. I presume that when the air filter finally ships it will be marked as a $500 commercial value as the GF was $3345 ($3823 total).
I can’t help but notice that several others are due today but that their order dates were upto 3 months after mine. So either GF has rapidly ramped production or they didn’t sell many in that time.
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I don’t think they sold many after the price went up, compared to the 30 day campaign.
Hope it’s all as it should be, (im)patiently waiting for mine to roll up…
It’s out of the box now on a nice flat surface. Thing is I have been working with IT/Gadgets for over 30 years but never have I had such a lack of info. No software stick, no setup sheet, no remove this/that before turning on. Just had a quick look at the site but no guides/software are obvious.
What am I missing? I know I’m a man and shouldn’t need manuals but…