Originally Posted by
markrlondon
First of all, there will be no Customs Duty applied to any watch imports in practice, except for shipments of a large number of watches. Usually it will just be VAT and the courier's handling fee.
Historically Creation shipped most watches direct from Singapore. This usually attracted no import VAT at the UK end because, in common with many people and businesses in countries like Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Malaysia, and so on, they simply didn't tell the truth on the customs declaration.
At the same time, they sometimes shipped watches from a partner in Japan. This was usually high value Seikos. In these cases, the customs declarations were always filled in accurately and thus did attract VAT at the UK end.
Slightly more recently, however, things changed: Creation did still ship direct from Singapore but it would seem that the courier they used had become something of a stickler for accurate customs declarations and so it was then more likely (but still not certain) that imports by this route would be caught for import VAT at the UK end.
Because of this, Creation started doing what an increasing number of far eastern firms have begun to do: They set up a UK-based warehousing/logistics operation, imported the watches into that, and then shipped from there to UK customers[1]. This allowed them to quote end user prices where they had already accounted for VAT.
You could choose between direct from Singapore vs. local UK postage on the Creation website.
More recently still, the option to choose shipping method seems to have disappeared from Creation's site, from what I can see. I haven't used them in a while so I don't know if they have gone back to shipping direct from Singapore (or from Japan for certain model sold through partners) for all watches or have moved to a UK-based warehouse for all UK orders.
In brief, if they have gone back to shipping direct from Singapore, UK customers should be prepared to pay the 20% VAT and courier's handling fee, but be pleased if it does not actually get charged. :-)
Footnote:-
1: Just before Creation started doing this, this method of more efficient shipping to UK customers came under attack by HMRC as a large number of Chinese and far eastern companies doing this were not registering for UK VAT when they should have done. They were (knowingly in many cases) evading UK VAT to bring better prices to their customers, as they would have done previously when they were shipping direct from their home countries with incorrect customs declarations. I do not know if Creation ran this illegal scheme or correctly registered for VAT in the UK.