Posting to Spain - ADT Postales / Correos / Customs nightmares

[romeo b]

We ship to Spain almost daily, all low value items in C5 cardboard envelopes - all declared with CN22 / IOSS (tax) paid via customer (eBay) and shipped via IOSS approved Royal Mail Click+Drop services.

Every single item arriving in Spain is stopped for customs assessment, which takes 15-30 days according to Correos/ADTPostales, and then duty is payable by the customer. This can be in excess of €30euro for an item which only cost £15 including postage.

Eventually, the customer is emailed by ADTPostales about their item ready to collect (after sometimes 30 days). This presents the following scenarios:

1) Customer waits weeks without any item arriving, opens an "Item not received" claim on eBay, and we can't prove delivery and have to refund.

2) Customer is told their item has arrived and they owe taxes/duty. They refuse the charges, and we have to refund as not delivered.

The handling period of the item between arriving in Spain and being processed by customs (ADTPostales) is around 2-4 weeks and pushes every item into the "late" category from the off.

We send a photo of the item complete with labels/customs info etc to the customer as we dispatch it, with an automated "you'll need to collect from ADTPostales" message. But this seems to fall on deaf ears and nobody really cares about that.

I can't see an option now whatsoever other than stopping selling to Spain completely. There literally is no circumstance where items arrive without hassle. It's just a waiting game for refunding them or them opening claims / payment disputes after prolonged periods of non-delivery.

Royal Mail DDP isn't even available in Spain, but it'll be far too dear for a low value item anyway.

Most other countries deliver without issue.

Anyone else in this boat? Banging my head against a wall now and tempted to just pull the plug on Spanish deliveries.

 

[Deleted member 335660]

Well we buy regularly from UK suppliers with no trouble.

Yes we have to wait for call and pay the VAT and fees to them, but it’s delivered within a few days. Fees vary from €15-30 for the consignment admin.

Suppliers are using Royal Mail/ Correos, DPD/Seur or DHL.

I can only conclude it’s E-bay that are the cause of such delay for some reason.

 

[fallschirmjaeger]

Romeo B

We are in a similar situation where some but not all items are getting through to Spain. We mainly get advised that the customer has rejected the goods due to very high charges on a low value item and so we wait to see if the items get returned (they don't always). It has got so bad that we have blocked Spain (and Italy) on eBay. However we do sell to Spain on our website as its a lot less hassle and we have no 'top rated seller' etc. status to loose!

We may start selling again on eBay to see how it goes, same for Italy but we have no criteria for when best to do this!

Mike

 

[romeo b]

Well we buy regularly from UK suppliers with no trouble.

Yes we have to wait for call and pay the VAT and fees to them, but it’s delivered within a few days. Fees vary from €15-30 for the consignment admin.

Suppliers are using Royal Mail/ Correos, DPD/Seur or DHL.

I can only conclude it’s E-bay that are the cause of such delay for some reason.

It's not eBay, as we can track the item arrived at ADTPostales (Spain customs) but it sometimes sits there for 3-4 weeks before the status is updated to "VAT payable" etc.

To levy €30+ charges/whatever on a £7 item is outrageous. It is almost pointless using the IOSS facility with eBay to send to Spain. The customer has paid the tax and eBay has remitted the tax to the Spanish government, the item is sent on an IOSS approved service via Royal Mail, and then the item is stopped for additional charges/handling fees. Then returned to me, refunded to the customer, and then what? The Spanish government have been paid for the VAT by eBay? Do eBay recoup this back?

It seems borderline illegal to operate like this.

Romeo B

We are in a similar situation where some but not all items are getting through to Spain. We mainly get advised that the customer has rejected the goods due to very high charges on a low value item and so we wait to see if the items get returned (they don't always). It has got so bad that we have blocked Spain (and Italy) on eBay. However we do sell to Spain on our website as its a lot less hassle and we have no 'top rated seller' etc. status to loose!

We may start selling again on eBay to see how it goes, same for Italy but we have no criteria for when best to do this!

Mike

It's super frustrating.. get stuff back all the time, and it's always Spain orders.

Italy was delayed severely but now isn't an issue whatsoever, stuff gets delivered without a hiccup!

 

[fallschirmjaeger]

It's super frustrating.. get stuff back all the time, and it's always Spain orders.

Italy was delayed severely but now isn't an issue whatsoever, stuff gets delivered without a hiccup!

Well that's good to know I may switch Italy back on in eBay and see what happens!

 

[Adam Le Grand]

We ship all around the world and Spain, Germany and Italy are some of the hardest countries to achieve swift delivery. Unfortunately since BREXIT (sorry to bring it up) shipping within the EU has generally become very difficult. Every country seems to have it's own rules and guidelines.

Have you considered using a service life Parcels2Go. We have a few customers that have switched over to using them of late, with success.

There is going to be issues for a long while yet with shipping internationally as there are so many external factors that are creating problems within the networks.

 

[Newchodge]

Every country seems to have it's own rules and guidelines.

Surely that is the point. Every country has always had its own rules and guidelines, but for countries within the EU, they weren't applied as the EU rules and guidelines superceded them. We chose to leave the EU, we now have to cope with every country's own rules and guidelines. I don't understand why people find that hard to accept?

 

[Adam Le Grand]

Surely that is the point. Every country has always had its own rules and guidelines, but for countries within the EU, they weren't applied as the EU rules and guidelines superceded them. We chose to leave the EU, we now have to cope with every country's own rules and guidelines. I don't understand why people find that hard to accept?

I totally agree.

I generally think people to tend to accept it, but accepting something and being happy with it are two different things. It is without doubt creating a lot more admin for people. This is the kind of thing that was not highlighted enough when BREXIT was being debated. Yet saying that, BREXIT was and still is, such a complex beast that there would have been no way of debating all the ins and outs of what BREXIT was going to effect.

 

[capacitum.com]

Hi
We had a look into this as we had major issues in July 2021 even after being IOSS registered. Customs would reject parcel or charge customers taxes and duty etc. It was a huge mess and very costly.

Shipping from the EU, with goods stored in the EU requires one to be VAT registered in the country your goods will be stored in. So for example if you are going to use a 3pl or open your warehouse in say France, you will need to be VAT registered in France. Then if you are going to sell in other EU countries, not just France then you also have to register for OSS so you can collect the taxes on your online store checkout.

Then each month you will need to provide the necessary sales information to the company that will be handling your VAT returns and OSS submissions and pay the taxes you have collected from each countries sales. Remember VAT rates are different in each EU country so you really want a web platform that can handle that or open an individual store aimed for that specific country.

After looking through all of our options we opted for FRANCE, as it didn't require fiscal representation, it seemed like the quickest time to get our registrations in place and it was the closest to the UK so sending our goods from here to there would be "cheaper and quicker".

We are now able to send our goods to the whole of EU much faster than we ever could from the UK, we can ship to Ireland and other EU countries in 1 day and overall our customers are much happier.

I hope this information helps

 

[salva88]

I use shipping-address-spain.com for my purchases outside the UK, mainly from stores in Spain, and then have them shipped to my home. It works perfectly and they're reliable.