I have recently purchased a £10 torch from banggood to the UK this has now been diverted in the UK for a customs assessment which has now occurred a £8 fee. The package was clearly labelled and I have imported many before with no issues. Has anyone else has this issue? I this the new normal or just a one off?
A number of us are waiting to see what happens. I have a couple of packages on the way.
Thats horrible.. thats almost doubling the price!
The fee presumably is for Royal Mail collecting it on behalf of customs. Or is £8 + £8, RM have always charged £8 to collect it, no matter how much customs charge there is and they are entirely different things - I have no idea if that is the case after Brexit.
There is already a customs/UK thread going - may be useful to keep it in 1 place if we can ( you probably didn’t know) :) LINK HERE
If you bought it PRE Brexit - you should not have this fee anyway so far as we can acess, but one thing I will tell you because i fought a charge last year - is that you can fight for incorrectly charged duty, but you can’t reclaim the £8 collection fee - I was told on the phone by customs you could, but on the letter i eventually got it said not. Again, post Brexit I have no idea.
here is my mammoth fight for wrongly paid duty thread - HERE I understand some may think it petty - I however see it as what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and wanted to prove a point. Again this process/values and so on may well have changed.
You also have to remember that before, it was a ‘lottery’ if you got charged or not, you were either lucky or not (90% lucky I’d say) - and the Chinese found ingenious ways to bypass it for us (sneaking it through Europe etc) and I have every confidence they will find another way again, they just need time lol!
It is important to remember that if the light is showing a ‘discount ’ of say 40% when you buy, that is irrelevant because the sender is legally bound to write the FULL price on it (even if they don’t) this is a definite when buying from the USA pre brexit.
If you can prove you bought it pre Brexit you should be able to reclaim the customs fee , because then there was no charge for anything under £15.
I wonder could you let us know in more detail - which light (web page) and what date you ordered and if it is a customs charge, or a RM fee for collecting. 
As much as I hate to admit it …… Amazon (US) deals with import fees and taxes on the bill.
I don’t know about GB (2021) but AZ does not add taxes in NL when the bill (item+ship) is < $25.
So no fixed fee for just looking at it.
The downside is only, when delivered by AZ it always gets a surcharge when the bill is >$25.
For things more expensive I trust the blindfold of Lady Justice who has only charged me once.
That is, in general, for goods coming from China with a declared value >$25
If I remember correctly, BG used to declare 50% of their list price.
Other sellers usually say their items cost $10.-
Never had a fee on more than 2 dozen BG orders to the uk.
Yeah, things have changed since Jan 1st. You might find everything you buy gets charged now.
The torch was one of these,
Xanes xph50 zoom, link does not work when pasted
just under £10 on 26th December when ordered, shipped same day. The £8 is for them to open it and check it, I will log a dispute with my credit card. The torch is for my mum 80y she loves zoom torches. I have ordered loads of torches and lock picks with no issues.
OK, I have found this - updated this year.
’Why have I been charged?
Royal Mail is required by law to present all items arriving from outside the EU to Border Force. This mail may be checked by them and be subject to customs charges.
Any charges are calculated and applied by Border Force on behalf of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). These charges aren’t applied by Royal Mail.
The charges depend on the contents, where the item came from and who sent it. Letters, postcards and parcels containing only documents are normally exempt.
For items sent through the post, Royal Mail pay HMRC any import VAT and Customs Duty on your behalf. This ensures you receive your item as quickly as possible.
We’ll then send you a Fee to pay card. This shows how much you need to pay before you can receive your item. The amount will include our £8 handling fee.’
it looks like ANY item coming into the EU now HAS to be presented to customs by RM, who then will charge you £8 for doing so - even if there is no duty. It clearly states that not being charged before 201 was an ‘anomaly’. So this looks correct - RM are charging you for presenting it to customs who decided there was nothing to pay, then RM charged you £8 for the pleasure. Fantastic. So if that is correct, we will be buying NOTHING from outside the UK ever again…… sad state of affairs.
Was it this maybe? LINK
i guess u need change shipping options that dont show if order is sent outside EU… what method did u chose?
I ordered a Convoy L21A on 28-10-2020. Tracking status says it has been presented to Customs on 07-01-2021 for assessment.
I wasn’t aware of the VAT on everything rule when I placed the order. Waiting to see if the invoice date being before the change will make a difference.
VAT is charged on everything now, so the £8 charge is for Royal Mail to handle the VAT collection. Your final bill from Royal Mail will likely be £8.20.
I see BangGood have a tariff insurance option, that may be helpful.
eBay has the best info on this I can find
https://sellercentre.ebay.co.uk/news/september-2020-index/vat-changes
I am TRYING to cancel a pre order that i did the other day (since BG contacted me to say it will be delayed for some weeks), it won’t let me, even though it tells me what to do - the option is not there lol.
Also, when you try to contact them, it says i have to contact them on facebook messenger or call them lol wtf? email is greyed out!!!
I have messaged the rep on here to see if they can cancel it for me.
That is the last order from China then…………or from anywhere non EU. Basically, if it’s NOT from EU add £8 to the price, even if it’s a $0.01 o ring.
We are going to be stuck between a rock and a hard place now - because you can’t claim the £8 EVER from RM, just the wrongly (if any) charged VAT!
I have never seen such a blatant money making scam in my life, may as well be run by criminals.
I am also awaiting 2 x $0.50 lenses from Ali, which will be refused rather than pay £8.
Luckily the acebeam copper tk16 I’ve got on the way is from the EU 
I have been thinking, this has massive repercussions.
Ebay for example - even IF I search ‘items located IN the UK’ I know for a fact a great deal of it comes via speedpack direct from China anyway.
So yes, you will pay vat before (in theory) - but I can see it still being handed to customs and that £8 fee applying. even f it is wrong - you cannot claim it back - it’s for a service which has taken place, like it or not.
That feels familiar, my country’s customs taxes are a minimum of $10 plus a $2 ‘processing’ fee for the postal service, so buying small orders is not worth.
In our case at least there are 3 x $200 yearly exemptions which can be used strategically.
Source (I suggest you bookmark it - took me ages to find) - LINK
I stumbled across this on the UK Government website - interesting, particularly this bit - armed with this you SHOULD be able to claim the £8 back from RM……should…… bearing in mind there was no duty charged.
I fit was EXACTLY £8 you were charged then there was no duty or tax charged - RM had no right charging you - if it was £8.02 they win.
Another thing to take into consideration is the sender HAS to by law put the FULL value on the package, not the discounted one - say BG has an item with 70% off - they HAVE to put the 100% value, postage and insurance on the package… so, if you for example paid £20 with 50% off, £2 shipping and £1 insurance then £43 should be what is on the parcel. If the vat was pre paid you will escape that, but you will still have £8 added on top - so in total you will pay £51 for your £20 item. I think that is correct.
’If there is no duty or tax to pay, you’ll not be charged a handling fee.’
- 3.5 Paying a handling fee to Royal Mail*
If customs charges are payable upon importation, Royal Mail will charge a handling fee to cover the costs for carrying out customs procedures, which includes paying any Customs Duty or VAT due and collecting it from you. If customs examination is required, or if information is missing from the declaration, Royal Mail open, repack and reseal the package. All international courier and postal operators charge fees for their services and HMRC and Border Force does not have any authority over the level of charges they apply.
If there is no duty or tax to pay, you’ll not be charged a handling fee.
The customs charges and handling fee will be itemised separately on the charge label. Royal Mail will tell you how much you need to pay and the available payment methods. Once payment is received, you can request delivery of your package or pick it up from your local delivery office or depot. You can read more about how to pay charges on either the Royal Mail or Parcelforce Worldwide websites.
As they’re completely separate from any customs charges, any queries about the handling fee should be raised with Royal Mail or Parcelforce Worldwide, as appropriate. Royal Mail does not answer queries about customs charges. If you have any queries about the charges raised on your specific parcel you should contact Border Force – for more information, see section 3.6. General queries on customs charges should be made to the HMRC Customs International Trade and Excise enquiries service – for more information, see section 2.3.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-and-overseas-goods-sold-directly-to-customers-in-the-uk
Way at the bottom “If a seller receives payment for an order before 11pm on 31 December 2020 and dispatches the item after that time, these rules will not apply.”. So no charges should be applied to items paid for last year.
Unfortunately I also bought a $14 flashlight on 1st Jan.
Basically - we are SHAFTED now. 
Modding like we do, elcheapo style will be reserved for the wealthy - by that I mean people who can stomach the £8 charge without considering it a worry on a semi regular basis.
Most items I buy (combined) are small under £10 in total , well, it’s game over really.
We would literally have to ‘club’ together to make it worthwhile and there is no way that would/could work effectively as it’s money and trust.
I have seen on a MSE post this “I pay the customs fee which is fair enough and do a credit card dispute for the £8 Royal Mail fee, I’ve seen it mentioned on MSE and Reddit, got my £8 back by saying they were charging for a service I’d not agreed to or notified of in advance and for forcing a payment under duress.” Perhaps this may work………. At the end of the day if we cannot pay for all the duty and vat at point of sale we have had it with buying torches from China in small cheap packages, it may pay to order a larger package once a year and pay the fees in one hit.
Most of my stuff comes from a handful of suppliers, so my plan is to batch up multiple projects and buy £50 worth of stuff at a time, paying £10 VAT and only one £8 handling fee, instead of placing sub-£15 orders for each and every new project as I used to do in order to get the Customs exemption.
I’ll still buy single items over £15 if I really want them, because they were always charged VAT and the £8 handling fee, so that’s no different to before.
Of course, I was occasionally buying things from suppliers where they only had that one sub-£15 item I wanted and there was nothing else I could usefully buy from them. Most of those orders won’t be happening at all now.
Items from the EU will have the same charge applied.