Custom Charges, anyone been stung recently?

[SRB Bloke 237]

Hi Guys ,

I'm considering buying a New CC01 chassis kit (don't know which one yet..) but funds are so tight I'm re-using teabags each day at breakfast...

So if I do buy one I'll buy it from the cheapest place I can find.. but when I've done that in the past I get big customs charges??

I've seen quite a few Special Black Avante' recently and was wondering if the customs guys were getting you all.

Or where is the best place to order a kit from.. lots of you bigging up Stellamodels at the moment..

Any thoughts ???

[Percymon 2187]

The last item I got caught for was 10 months ago, a shoebox sized parcel from hobbyking with radio system, motors and lipo packs. Mail depot told me they normally stop one in ten, but were moving towards one in five policy. This doesn't appear to be the case as lots of forum members seem to get items through, even large packages!

Think part of the problem for the royal mail is now the shear volume if items coming in from the far east, they can't possibly cope with 1 in 10.

The cc01 land cruiser kit was £130, and latterly £100 in the modelzone sale. I doubt you'll find one now even if you called every store.

Check the shipping costs from the far east sellers because when I looked last week I came to the view at unless you wanted to spend £300 with them the prices were little better than buying in the uk and that was without import charges.

[Xeostar 942]

Hi,

i think over a certain value technically you should always be paying import and vat. I think with a kit its really just luck if the draw if you pay or not. I recently got an avante bs with no charges but then I've bought some lipos for $50 and got charged.

In my experience its about 1 in 7 times.

I would suggest assume you are going to pay and if you don't it's a bonus.

[Wandy 1617]

Stella will mark down the value of the kit to under $30 if you ask them so if your gonna get hit by some duty it will be based on the postage and nothing else. It's only happened to me once in 12 kits though and that was just for £17.50.

[ngbee 0]

I just got hit with charges for my Avente Black Special sent from Hong Kong.

Customs label declared it as a gift with a value of 50 USD.

I got charged just under £23 GBP (no bad really, considering all the kits I've had without any charges)

Most of the sellers I have used have been OK but best all round service I've had by far is Stellamodels