Thanks Mark. I still view it as Brexit related as it wouldn't have happened had we still been part of the EU - with Victorinox making the balls-up. Regardless, best of luck, whatever you decide.
Whereas I view it as idiot related as it wouldn't have happened if either Victorinox Retail AG and/or PVS Fulfillment-Service GmbH (Victorinox's German shipping agent) knew what they were doing under rules that have not changed at all due to Brexit. ;-)Originally Posted by jukeboxs
Thanks. :-)
I’m far from wealthy, but I put a lot of value on time. I suspect you might get the Vat refunded though, worth a quick email?
As do I. You'll note that this is the very first day that I have had the (adequately certain) information available to even be able to write a meaningful email to them.
As I said in #35 I think it is extraordinarily unlikely that I will be successful in getting the VAT back from Victorinox.
In order to agree to a refund they would need to admit to making a serious error and I can't see them doing this, especially when the same error must surely have affected numerous other non-EU customers.
I have emailed them to ask which country's VAT they charged and how much they charged, and we'll see what they say. As I've said, I'll report back here with what they say. We'll see if they admit to an error.
Last edited by markrlondon; 6th October 2021 at 15:38.
Please do.
Looking at the site, I would say that it is entirely reasonable for a British retail consumer to conclude that a Swiss Champ XXL is £329 including VAT and delivery to a British address and it is the responsibility of Victorinox up to the point of delivery to your address and you should not have to care whether the knife was consigned from Switzerland, Germany or the UK and have no involvement in customs clearance between Switzerland and the EU and then the EU and UK.
Yes, that is very much what you'd expect from everything on the website.
And I suspect that this would indeed have been the case if the order had been for less than £135. (Because they would probably have correctly collected UK VAT and perhaps Customs Duty up front as part of the price and remitted it to UK HMRC under the scheme for this purpose).
As I noted back in #1, the Victorinox website warns at checkout that "Shipments to UK over £ 135.00 are subject to customs or duties". This is correct but, despite this, it would still seem that they don't know how to correctly process orders larger than £135 to non-EU (or perhaps just UK) customers.
I am very curious to know what they will say in response to my question as to what country's VAT they charged me and how much VAT they actually charged. There is no way for me to know this information from their website alone.
As I mentioned, I was only able to ascertain that they (probably) charged me 19% German VAT by luck and by inference from information on Topcashback.
If they did charge German VAT then they should not have done so.
And if they say they charged UK VAT, then they didn't correctly tell UK HMRC about it.
This is exactly the same as mine, my order was also under £135 coming in at £126 after a 10% discount. I assume they have declared the full value and that’s why I was charged the import duties.
I called parcelforce and asked for them to be returned.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
And how about El Salvador? El Presidente won't be pleased.
Someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.
I suspect that in this case it might be human error or plain laziness. This is how it is going to be in a post-Brexit UK; leaving the EU has introduced extra layers of bureaucracy that didn't exist previously and people will make mistakes or just won't be arsed to do extra paperwork if they can avoid it. However simple you think it is, you have demonstrated here that it can easily go wrong. I had to get used to it happening frequently when living outside the EU and I suggest that you do the same or only buy locally, for the benefit of your stress levels.
Last edited by Mr Curta; 7th October 2021 at 00:22.
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
But of course. Another word for that, or the cause of it, is idiocy. As such, that's a bug, not a feature, and certainly not something neutral to just be lived with.
How very English! ;-) I think it more useful and beneficial to confront it and do what can be done to bring it to people's attention so that they can avoid being harmed by it.
You find shoddy customer service tolerable. I do not, particularly when it is a matter of large sums of money.
Blaming it on Brexit doesn't change the fact that it is poor customer service and idiocy (and human error or plain laziness don't change this fact and does not make being ripped off magically tolerable).
Ok, I've now received a response. They are not admitting error but have made a very odd offer.
I will not quote their exact response in full because I won't do that without permission but I will paraphrase it (and quote a key section exactly):
Because of Brexit customers must pay taxes and duties on goods worth more than £135.
This applies all shops outside the UK.
They can't calculate the extra costs.
I have two ways forward:
(1) Pay the extra taxes, send them the receipt, proof of payment, and they'll refund me.
(2) "pay the extra costs in advance and send us the receipt from Parcelforce and the receipt of payment, and we will arrange a refund"
Well, the first three lines are of course flannel. I was expecting to pay UK taxes (which I made clear in my email to them). The actual problem, to re-iterate, is that they seem to have charged me EU taxes that I should not, under any circumstances, have been charged[1].
(For the avoidance of doubt, I paid the price I did because I expected that Victorinox knew what they were doing. Perhaps they did but, if so, not in a good way.)
Reading on, it looks to me like they might know that what they have done might be incorrect.
The second offer is of course the default: Wait for it to be sent back by Parcelforce and they'll refund then.
However, the first offer is curious and I quoted it exactly above: They are actually offering to pay my UK "extra costs".
Well, if I take that literally then they'd be paying me £120.72, the total of my "extra costs" (#34). However, that is actually way more than I expect back from them! At most, I would expect them to refund me only £56.20 (#1, item 7), which is what they themselves appear to have overcharged me. I'd expect to take up the £19.39 tax over-payment (#34) with Border Force directly.
Footnote:-
1: Although I say again that I don't have proof of this, other then the lucky/inference information I was able to glean from the transaction as shown on Topcashback (#1, item 7).
Last edited by markrlondon; 7th October 2021 at 15:50.
Someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.
Well, what to do now. I am surprised by the second offer.
Were I to take them up on their offer of refunding the "extra costs" then I can't believe that they'd be willing to refund the entire £120.72 when they found out about it! Indeed, that would be way more than I expect from them anyway (which is only £56.20).
So what would they be willing to refund me? I suspect they'd pick a number off of the Parcelforce tax demand and refund that. That could range from the £12.00 Parcelforce fee, to the £30.60 Customs Duty, to the £78.12 VAT.
And then, were they to refund just the £56.20, I still wouldn't be able to get back the £19.39 I would have overpaid to Parcelforce at that point.
I could try and discuss this with them further and point out (again) that UK taxes are not the issue; that my complaint was due to them as far as I can tell charging me German VAT. Indeed, their own Ts&Cs state that "The prices quoted are retail prices in Pounds Sterling (GBP) and include the applicable value-added tax." In my case, the applicable VAT should have been zero. It would seem that it was not.
But I know that such a discussion would probably not be fruitful. It would, as I said earlier, effectively require them to admit error. The nearest I am likely to get is the second offer which, as far as I can see, is a kind of implicit "yeah, we know we're overcharging you but we'll pay something to make those who point it out go away".
I'd love to see what the paper invoice (assuming there is one) inside the package says but I can't get to see that unless or until I pay the over-charged taxes.
I think I'll just have to take them up on their first offer of allowing Parcelforce to send back the package and then get a refund that way. It doesn't resolve the fundamental issue of overcharging but it will get the money back that I have paid so far.
Last edited by markrlondon; 7th October 2021 at 15:48.
If you read my earlier post you will see that I found it tolerable because I did not have to pay VAT or Duty in the destination country. It was incorrect, but much much like your Option 2 which you seem to be prepared to accept. Now that I am no longer exempt and not in the EU I prefer to limit the potential risks through lower value purchases. I have realistic expectations of the numerous potential points of failure due to human nature, which is very much based on experience.
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
So they’ve offered to refund way more than you were due?! Result! Great ending to the whole affair. All’s well that’s ends well.
Ah yes, good point.
No, it's the first offer (allow Parcelforce to send it back) that I am moving towards accepting.
As I said, I'd accept the second offer if I could be sure that the tax refund so surprisingly offered would leave me in the position I should have been in (no better, no worse) but I can't rely on that without further complicated discussions. Now that I know for sure that I can reset the transaction entirely I'll probably go that route (and later buy the same items from a more competent vendor).
As do I. That is exactly why I expect professional exporters to know what they are doing. I did, when I worked for a UK exporting business many years ago. An expectation of professional competence is fundamentally not an unreasonable or unrealistic expectation in my opinion.
Also, in the modern world, I do not accept that "failure due to human nature" is ok from anything larger than a SOHO or small business. I give small businesses the benefit of the doubt because I know that keeping up with rules and regs is very difficult for them (I was once in that position). But Victorinox isn't a small business. They even employ a specialist exporting agent.
We have deeply differing opinions on this matter. So be it.
Well, no, probably not.
On a naive reading of it, it certainly seems that way but, as I said, it is most unlikely that they'd be willing to follow through for the full amount. See what I wrote in #61 and #63.
And, in any case, I am honest: I could not and would not accept more than is actually due to me. ;-)
Last edited by markrlondon; 7th October 2021 at 19:56.
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