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Plaza Japan query - UK buyers

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12 minutes ago, Tobyone said:

both were just over the £135 limit, i purposely kept it low just in case, but made no difference. As such, I wont be order from Tamico now unless its something i really want and cant get elsewhere.

That's disappointing to hear. I wonder if it's a Wales vs UK thing?

Either way, at least Plaza looks safe! Will be making an order shortly.

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My last order from PJ was over $200. I partnered with a friend on the Oder to split the cost. With the $ vs yen being strong PJ is a great source, like the old Banzai days. My only issue with them is they don’t carry much in the way of kits and don’t accept special orders. Yet it seems they're the only one in Japan that ships internationally 

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50 minutes ago, Kol__ said:

I added only one thing (a body shell) to my basket today and the shipping costs were like £40, so I've no idea what's going on there.

A body shell will automatically push it into RC kit shipping price range, which is the DHL/Fedex option only. 

42 minutes ago, Juhunio said:

yup, standard Japan air is still not an option to the UK. EMS came back in last week, so maybe standard Air will be back soon?

 

1 hour ago, nowinaminute said:

Just went to make an order and noticed there's still no Japan post economy or standard air.

I am also on the frequent flyer forum and until more flights between UK and Japan, normal air will not be back unfortunately. 

Personally, I had just placed a £240 (Inc postage), 30+ items order today but not to UK. I got it sent to my mum Singapore and postage costs £59 EMS, too heavy/big for normal air. Postage to UK will cost upwards of £90 for this order. Will be flying out personally to get it myself in October. 

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41 minutes ago, Tobyone said:

Unlike @Juhunio, both my last Tamico orders have been hit with custom fees, both were just over the £135 limit, i purposely kept it low just in case, but made no difference. As such, I wont be order from Tamico now unless its something i really want and cant get elsewhere.

Post Brexit, anything from EU will attract additional attention due to many people that had gotten used to tax free stuff from EU. If above £135 total including postage, seller will (should) not charge for tax but HMRC will collect on entry. My wife does import/export in her work and know all about the trouble with dealing with EU.

Get from elsewhere is the best way forward, especially if you can keep it below £135. However do stay away from RCMart. They fill in the CN22 form incorrectly and you will get double taxed and RM fine on top on entry if you purchased just below £135 in total. 

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With any Tamico order I use the Royal Mail / Parcelone shipping option. Parcels get handled by a European network through Germany to Belgium, then exported to UK where they enter the Parcelforce network. Just checked my account and I’ve made 12 orders since we left the EU, all at the €160 minimum plus shipping. None of them have incurred any customs charges. 

Similarly, my experience with RC Mart has always been flawless. I never order more than around £120 including tax and delivery, and have never incurred any additional  charges. Delivery has always been quick and efficient (apart from the depths of the pandemic, but that was fair enough), though shipping can get pricey if you’re not careful. But their shipping quotes adjust as you add / remove things from your basket which is very handy, so you can decide item-by-item what is ‘worth it’. Personally, I highly recommend them if the economics work for you. 

With Plaza Japan or shipping from Japanese proxies, I now ensure the invoice value is maximum ¥20,000 (£130-ish). No customs issues. 

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I had compared like for like, RCMart vs Asiatee, recently. For the same item and RCMart always wanted far higher postage, 2 to 3 times more usually, but sometimes even more.

Recent parts only order from Asiatee cost me £0.25 in postage, cheaper than a Second Class stamp within UK while RCMart wanted £8 postage for the same items. 

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And of course, with RCMart, one will get double taxed if one is making a bigger order of even just over £80 as postage and tax will push the total above £135. 

Finally, I noticed that even in an £135 order, say a full kit, RCMart will still apply tax on checkout (on top of their insane postage cost) when according to the rules, they should not. This makes me really question if they know the rules or not or are they really paying HMRC what they had collected.

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Well, that went a bit wrong.

I made my order, then realised I forgot 1 little item. Plaza said "don't worry, we'll refund you as a store credit so you can re-order and add the missing item"

So I got my refund, and now half the things I ordered are out of stock! What a disaster! I'm not sure if it will just take a while for the items to show as available again because they were allotted to my order or if someone got in there before me!

Some of the parts I waited 4 months to come back into stock, so I ordered multiple of and now there's none or just 1 of them showing as in stock. And those were the parts I actually made the order for in the first place!

 

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1 hour ago, nowinaminute said:

Well, that went a bit wrong.

I made my order, then realised I forgot 1 little item. Plaza said "don't worry, we'll refund you as a store credit so you can re-order and add the missing item"

So I got my refund, and now half the things I ordered are out of stock! What a disaster! I'm not sure if it will just take a while for the items to show as available again because they were allotted to my order or if someone got in there before me!

Some of the parts I waited 4 months to come back into stock, so I ordered multiple of and now there's none or just 1 of them showing as in stock. And those were the parts I actually made the order for in the first place!

Never cancel an order and then reorder to add a forgotten item. There are other people around the world looking for the same part not just you. Also, with the lost of 1999, PJ is the only one left. 

Some things do get restocked, but you never know with PJ. You can risk waiting and it never comes back in stock or go elsewhere. Someone (I think) had already said they tried to get an answer from PJ and never got anything that made sense from them. Again, 1999 wins on this aspect as they will state restock or gone forever on the item page. 

So you were the one clearing out PJ's stock! I had seen items going out of stock right in front of my eyes! Well, seriously though, there are also other people around the world with the same idea as you, "buy up just in case". When your basket got put back onto the market, this causes even more panic and they just grab what they can. 

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Yesterday, I placed an order with Tamico. I have managed to keep it exactly at 160 euros + postage via Royal Mail.

Lets see how this gets on with custom charges when it hits the UK.

 

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Turns out they just needed to free up the items from showing as sold from my previous order.

The emailed me as soon as they were available again so I got in there quick.

Everything ordered again now in the same quantities! 😅

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23 minutes ago, nowinaminute said:

The emailed me as soon as they were available again so I got in there quick.

Quick is the word with PJ these days, or forever hold your peace. 😁

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1 hour ago, alvinlwh said:

Quick is the word with PJ these days, or forever hold your peace. 😁

Yeah I was refreshing the page on the bus to work 🤣

Luckily, the old order page warns if there's insufficient stock to reorder the same amount, so after they emailed, I kept refreshing till the items in question no longer had the warning next to them and got straight in there.

Any ideas how long FedEx takes usually? They usually take a few days to ship out but any idea how long between confirmation of despatch and delivery? 

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Another thing I kept meaning to ask. Reading the rules, and FedEx and DHLs own interpretation of them, the 135 limit is for the value of the goods only, and postage and insurance etc aren't part of the limit. 

But how has that worked in reality? I made sure to keep the total INCLUDING postage to just under £130 but has anyone successfully had say £130 worth of items and not been charged? Seems like the kind of thing the courier might try and take advantage of..

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On 7/15/2022 at 9:21 AM, alvinlwh said:

Recent parts only order from Asiatee cost me £0.25 in postage, cheaper than a Second Class stamp within UK while RCMart wanted £8 postage for the same items.

I can't seem to replicate this. Do they have a shipping discount for larger orders or something?

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4 minutes ago, nowinaminute said:

I can't seem to replicate this. Do they have a shipping discount for larger orders or something?

Nevermind, just logged in and now it shows free or cheap shipping for a lot of things!

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OK next question 😂

Some items on asiatees give a cheap or free shipping option at checkout but some show prices like $6 even though they item page says they are eligible for "free super saver" delivery. Is this a coivd thing?

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10 minutes ago, nowinaminute said:

Any ideas how long FedEx takes usually? They usually take a few days to ship out but any idea how long between confirmation of despatch and delivery?

 

8 minutes ago, nowinaminute said:

Another thing I kept meaning to ask. Reading the rules, and FedEx and DHLs own interpretation of them, the 135 limit is for the value of the goods only, and postage and insurance etc aren't part of the limit. 

12 days from dispatch to me in Orkney (offshore extended delivery time). 

I once ordered a kit, so not small from them. No problem with any import "fines". Total value is relatively low though, about £70 total, and it is not a big kit, just a SU-01. 

8 minutes ago, nowinaminute said:

I can't seem to replicate this. Do they have a shipping discount for larger orders or something?

No, that order was for really small stuff, A5 padded envelope type of small. Something that small and light should not cost too much to post and yet RCMart wants £8+ for the same order. Their rip off postage had already been discussed on another thread and then I personally experienced their dodgy tax declaration just makes me stay away from them. 

For bigger items, their postage are somewhat closer but AT still beats them. Do a trail basket to see what I mean. And RCMart will add 20% on top of the TOTAL, even if the total is over £135.

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2 minutes ago, nowinaminute said:

OK next question 😂

Some items on asiatees give a cheap or free shipping option at checkout but some show prices like $6 even though they item page says they are eligible for "free super saver" delivery. Is this a coivd thing?

I never figured this out. There is a min spend, but even when I hit it, I am still quoted postage. 

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18 minutes ago, nowinaminute said:

Another thing I kept meaning to ask. Reading the rules, and FedEx and DHLs own interpretation of them, the 135 limit is for the value of the goods only, and postage and insurance etc aren't part of the limit. 

But how has that worked in reality? I made sure to keep the total INCLUDING postage to just under £130 but has anyone successfully had say £130 worth of items and not been charged? Seems like the kind of thing the courier might try and take advantage of..

Without making any sweeping statements, but just based on my own personal experience....

I got hit a couple of times shipping items from a model shop in Belgium (ie, within the EU). The final taxes and duties charges were based on a figure that included the shipping costs

When I ship items from Japanese Proxy sites, the couple of times I shipped something above the £135 threshold, the charges were only based on the item's auction hammer price. The international shipping fees were excluded, as were the proxy's own buying fees, and the domestic shipping charges within Japan, all of which technically are the  part of the cost / value of the item 

Now I just tend to consolidate items into a single parcel with an invoice value of maximum £130. That invoice value is just the hammer price of the auctions, and excludes the proxy's fees and any domestic shipping costs. International shipping is also over and above that invoice value, but these parcels never bother customs 

I figure that would also work with the likes of PJ, but I tend to just keep it so basket and postage is around £130, just to be safe 

Again, that is just my personal experience 

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@JuhunioHMRC will look at the CN22 (or equivalent) plus the postage label to determine the total value. That form is filled in by the sender. In the past, things will slip by when declared as a gift as the limit was £38 (IIRC). However these days, gifts have a limit of £18 while commercial is £135. These numbers are the total cost, meaning CN22 + postage. So it is actually better to mark things as commercial than gifts these days. 

RCMart declared goods+postage+tax on the CN22, and when HMRC added the postage to this total, it pushed my value over £135, thus leading to me being double taxed. A mistake once is fine, but after I complain to them, they made the same mistake with my next order again. 

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49 minutes ago, nowinaminute said:

Hmm well mine came to £129 including postage. Fingers crossed

That is sailing a bit close, changes in exchange rates might push it over. Good luck! 🤞

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3 hours ago, alvinlwh said:

That is sailing a bit close, changes in exchange rates might push it over. Good luck! 🤞

The thing is I read this on the Fedex website and took it to mean that the limit doesn't include shipping fees. image.png.3dce14cd968efba087b73ede24bc4d0f.png

But I  tried to strike a balance between ordering as much as possible but hopefully not falling fowl of the exchange rate *IF* Fedex decide to calculate it including shipping.

There's a only been a couple of days in the last 4 months where the exchange rate would put it over £135 and I believe the rates HMRC etc use are set per month and based on averages and not just one day. For example, the rate set for this month equates to about £128.

We shall see.

 

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6 hours ago, alvinlwh said:

No, that order was for really small stuff, A5 padded envelope type of small. Something that small and light should not cost too much to post and yet RCMart wants £8+ for the same order. Their rip off postage had already been discussed on another thread and then I personally experienced their dodgy tax declaration just makes me stay away from them. 

I just tried a tamiya super mini CVA set and it said it qualified for free delivery both on the item page and in the checkout but they still wanted £6 lol. Seems like something that wouldn't be any more bulky than those few items on your list. Who knows. Still a decent price.

And I agree about RCMart, used to use them a lot but the postage has gone a bit loopy with the way it shoots up with each item added. I honestly didn't realise how how competitive AT was!

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2 hours ago, nowinaminute said:

But I  tried to strike a balance between ordering as much as possible but hopefully not falling fowl of the exchange rate *IF* Fedex decide to calculate it including shipping.

There's a only been a couple of days in the last 4 months where the exchange rate would put it over £135 and I believe the rates HMRC etc use are set per month and based on averages and not just one day. For example, the rate set for this month equates to about £128.

I don't think it is Fedex that decides on the charges or not, they submit the documents and HMRC decide. The difference here is, I think, they submit 100% of the documents while RM submits only 10% (?). 

Not sure about the exchange rates they use. Just hope it will sail through for you. 

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