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Imagine my delight to get a little note through the door to tell me that my item I had ordered had not been delivered as it had some VAT that needed to be paid.
OK I though, that’s fair enough. Off I toddled to the Royal Mail sorting office. It’s so customer freindly in Newark that there a re no spaces to park for customers – so I parked in the nearby pay and display car park – Cost £1.00
Head into the Royal Mail sorting office and fork out £9.11 for the VAT that needed to be paid, and then got stug/ mugged/ robbed (delete as appropriate) with a further £8.00 Royal Mail International Handling Fee.
So lets rewind ab bit. I ordered a lovely pen at a total cost of $98.99. which I guess equated to round about £60. So paing VAT I’m fine with. How on earth do they justify an £8.00 handling fee thugh. Does it really cost them £8.00 to collect £9.11, because if it does isn’t that another argument that shows collecting certain taxes are wholly inefficient as the cost of collecting is the same as the revenue received. How can it cost £8.00 when it only cost $9.04 to get the parcel all the way from Texas?
You know I wouldn’t mind if there was ANY way in which the handling fee could be avoided. But apparently there isn’t. I wonder how much Royal Mail International receives each year from handling fees alone. You only have to put the phrase in google to see how outraged people are. So not only have the company allowed the pension fund, in which I have a few years worth of payments, to run into billions of pounds worth of deficit, but now they are actively stealing money out of my walle tin the form of their “handling fee”!
do we have sympathy with anyone who shops abroad, in the hope of getting a cheaper purchase than they would if the item was available and bought in the UK?
