DPD Self-destruction with IOSS?!

[joshgeake]

So I've been a DPD customer for 7+ years...until 01/07/2021 when someone there decided that the affordable "Europe by Road" tariff will now require all parcels to be shipped with an IOSS number.

Being frank about IOSS, I looked at the admin burden and thought it was a bit of a scam. Instead of couriers and recipients handling the import process, the EU thought it would be a good idea to dump all that admin onto the exporter without any real legislation. Hence, I (like many thousands of other worldwide businesses) chose to avoid it. Also, as someone that exports books (i.e. goods that aren't necessarily standard rate VAT in literally every country across the globe) I knew it would be a looming disaster.

Now DPD literally won't let us create a label for anything under 150 EUR unless we're IOSS registered! From what I hear, IOSS isn't even functioning properly yet but they're literally blocking their customers from dispatching sub-150 EUR parcels into the EU. It's like they've chosen to pour petrol on themselves.

Parcelforce seem to have worked out that (shock) many businesses may not want to do the EU's import admin so have put together a choice of DDP, a per-parcel IOSS compliance charge or indeed just shipping DDU.

Has anyone found a way out of this? Or a courier that's taken a smarter route than DPD?

 

[romeo b]

Have you looked at Royal Mail’s PDDP services they’re trialing? See page17 of the ongoing IOSS thread in this forum.

They charge 50p per item, and bill you the VAT back for the country’s rate, plus the actual service fee - which seems to be fair. Tracked, untracked etc, but think not every country is operational just yet.

So depending how you sell, you’d just get the customer to pay the VAT at your checkout, and then RM bill it you back and charge you 50p in exchange for a delivery duty paid service. I’ll be using this myself when I get back on my feet.

 

[WWALLACE]

HMRC has a lot to answer for on IOSS as they have sat on the side lines throughout this omnishambles - their reasoning being that this is EU legislation therefore it is fair for them to watch as we small businesses are hung out to dry.

We are in the position where we cannot wait in hope for this to be rectified anytime soon. Our position now is to purchase an IOSS number plus the added, unwanted services supplied via an intermediate organisation.

If anyone has any info. relating to the costs being applied by these intermediate companies it would be much appreciated?? - we are of course attempting to spend as little as possible on what is frankly a masterclass in profiteering.