The countdown has begun, time to place your bets.

Yes, this #fckngbrexit...! What I have heard from other customers, you pay the UK VAT plus a fee of around 15 EUR for the customs handling. Please let us know about your experiences!

BTW: The customs are my personal enemies too; I'm always hoping stuff goes through without issues... Sacrifying a virgin might help - I haven't tried it yet...

Short story: The worst nightmare with customs was a delivery of 250 AE power supply adapters; customs checked them and declared them as dangerous, with the option to destroy them (for free, how generous!) or sending back to the manufacturer in china (on my cost) . I tried everything I could, sending CE certificates, promising to add operation instructions (they complained about these are missing), nothing helped. End of the story: They were sent back to china, I paid 900 EUR (no typo) freight cost for that, and the manufacturer sent them again via another carrier, again 500 EUR (no typo) freight cost, then they arrived finally. So some of you might have the longest-travelling-ever power supply adapters!

Just to add my input here: I am not VAT registered, so there is not currently any UK VAT paid by *anyone* (if I reach the UK VAT threshold of £85k then I will be happy to deal with the extra paperwork). VAT should now be charged at the receiver's rate (which varies from EU country-to-country) which, in principle, is a positive move since it means that it is no longer possible for Amazon etc. to ship items from a low VAT area to a high VAT area, and therefore undercut local suppliers. Unfortunately the extra paperwork involved, and the obscure process*, means that this new system is still penalizing 'the little guy'.

The end result of this is that VAT is charged on EU sales (and collected by the postal service with their pernicious 'handling charge'), but not on sales elsewhere in the world. I am waiting for a streamlined 3rd-party service to step in and handle all of this stuff, but so far the options are very few. I tried an experiment using eBay as an intermediary, but in the end the charges amounted to 16% of the order total - in effect I ended up paying a larger handling charge) - and *still* the customer had to pay the handling charge even though VAT was already paid!!! 

The UK government (customs dept.) have no clue on this either - they were supposed to have registration systems in place for July but, of course, they are still not ready.

But what do you expect from a government whose prime minister famously said 'fuck business'? 

(pt3r : So far I have not had any packages returned from Europe due to incorrect customs information, so I hope that the package will be on its way again soon!)


Maybe I should simply license the wonkystuff modules to a European manufacturer...?

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* (as a UK supplier, In order to comply with the new system I need to appoint a VAT representative in the EU!)

just out of interest ... was this shipment over £135 value?

fingering a chord ABOVE the Capo is a good analogy of how useful he is.. perhaps he’s giving us a subtle clue ;-)

So I got an email from the bHellgian post inviting me to pay 44,8 euros of which 15 euros where standard handling cost and the rest was VAT. I don't understand why it has to be so bloody complicated and expensive to order a package outside eu. #thanksboris. Hopefully they will soon release it and not loose it.

yes it's a mess indeed. but hey fingers crossed they release the package soon so I can  start patching :-)

good title for your AEtherwaves contribution ;^]