I'm in Warwickshire, UK. UPS hit me for £40.85 comprising £29.85 and £11.00 UPS clearance fee. The courier took the commercial invoice away with her so I couldn't check the PG declared value. I assume it must have been £149.25 including shipping as the duty on this sort of item is 20%. Well, it's not Duty, it's actually a VAT charge. It would be the same if PG shipped Fedex or even Canadian mail, although in the latter case your package would go into the maw of Parcelfarce (aka Royal Mail) here in the UK and they charge £12 clearance fee, and your package wouldn't be actually delivered for another three weeks. I'm not joking- it happened to me a couple of months ago.

I used to order stuff from Amazon.com, and lots of other stuff from the US and never get charged. However, I think that was more by luck. Perhaps couriers are all sharpening their act, I don't know. I will not be buying again like this. Next year I will have to sit and download everything between the hours of midnight and 8am when my ISP (Plusnet) charges zero.

What does the US and Canada charge for such imports the other way? I suggest they respond in kind and start a full scale tariff war - whack all EU imports with 20% duty.

Some companies, (e.g. I know Cakewalk used to do it), bulk ship/assemble in the Irish Republic (EU member)when a new release takes place. I think Apple do something similar with hardware? All shipments to EU countries are then free of duties and VAT and therefore free of a handling charge, so totally free to the recipient.

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