Royal mail DDP handling fees

[Graham Wharton]

Hi all, a simple question for someone who sends items using royal mail DDP.

When you are billed back for DDP charges at the end of the month are you charged only for

1. 50p per package RM handling fee
2. Recipient country Import tax
3. Recipient country Import Duty

RM says that's all to pay and there are no additional charges.

Do recipient country customs not bill back a customs clearance fee like they do to the recipient when sending DAP? I'm finding it hard to believe they don't.

Thanks for any clarification

Graham

 

[MOIC]

Royal Mail have reciprocal agreements with most countries.

 

[LPB 123]

We always find that the tax / duty element is slightly more than it should be so assume there must be some extra hidden charge in there.

 

[Graham Wharton]

Yeah, I don't mind some minor discrepancies, but trying to determine whether there is going to be a 20EUR per parcel in country customs handling fee sprung on me at the end of the month. From the sounds of it, possibly not, which is encouraging as I can easily hide the 50 pence royal mail fee and slightly higher shipping charges to the customer along with the expected VAT and duty, in exchange to me being responsible for clearance and not them, but if I have to start adding on 20EUR fee per item, that will be much less attractive, and I'll probably carry on taking my chances with hit and miss IOSS.

 

[DefinitelyMaybeUK]

@Graham Wharton We've been using RM (P)DDP for quite a while now and there are no additional handling charges like you are concerned about. It's a very good service in general - France/Netherlands is typically 3-4 working days delivered which post Brexit is more than good. If you do high value, small goods than IOSS has it's limits whereas DDP doesn't have the 150 eur restriction. TBH the vat billed is pretty accurate for us when I've checked, it's supposed to apply to shipping too don't forget. I'm sure there's always an exchange rate discrepancy in there. Looking at last billed NL we charged 15.31 vat and were billed 15.14 by RM. That said, when duty is charged on goods over 150 eur, the billed amount is generally slightly more that what we think for given CoO/hscode but it's lost in the noise. We haven't implemented the Norway DDP yet that recently came in, but yeah the EU ones all work fine. It's not unusual to find customers place 2 RM DDP orders, rather than have a larger courier order and have to pay their fee + vat on arrival.

 

[LPB 123]

Yeah, I don't mind some minor discrepancies, but trying to determine whether there is going to be a 20EUR per parcel in country customs handling fee sprung on me at the end of the month. From the sounds of it, possibly not, which is encouraging as I can easily hide the 50 pence royal mail fee and slightly higher shipping charges to the customer along with the expected VAT and duty, in exchange to me being responsible for clearance and not them, but if I have to start adding on 20EUR fee per item, that will be much less attractive, and I'll probably carry on taking my chances with hit and miss IOSS.

Nah nothing like 20EUR, always comes back just slightly over the expected amount, like £1-£2 which is easy to build in to the shipping charge like the 50p RM admin fee.

For larger parcels ParcelForce admin fee is 5 euros and they do offer DDP to all EU countries whereas Royal Mail only offer it to some. I think Sweden has been "coming soon" for about a year now.