Buying and Selling models to/from Europe

[NS Peak]

On 30/08/2022 at 08:48, LimboBrit said:

I have made fairly recent purchases from Kernow and The Model Centre whereby UK VAT was deducted before shipment. Dutch BTW was then charged by the courier. I don't know if this means that they are registered for VAT in the EU. To me it doesn't really matter so I was wondering, what is your concern? I'm fairly sure Hornby are registered in the EU if you want to buy directly from them.

To give an example.  Buying from Hattons which are Dutch  vat ( btw) registered the price paid is that quoted plus a delivery charge.  Hattons themselves track and pay the tax to the Dutch authorities. Buying from Kernow as an example (and I have done both)  Kernow remove uk vat from the price and then add shipping.  On receipt I have to pay Dutch vat plus a surcharge from the currier which is normally at least 15 euros on top of the vat. This makes it much better to pick a Hattons over Kernow particularly  unless you buy in bulk

[Matt C]

Worth noting that Accurascale supply European customers ( and I THINK) ROTW) from their base in Ireland so it's important to make sure that you are registered with the right part of the company

I'm sure @McC will confirm and if your not sure which part your registered with they will sort it for you.

HTH

[McC]

5 hours ago, Matt C said:

Worth noting that Accurascale supply European customers ( and I THINK) ROTW) from their base in Ireland so it's important to make sure that you are registered with the right part of the company

I'm sure @McC will confirm and if your not sure which part your registered with they will sort it for you.

HTH

indeed Accurascale.eu ships across the EU in euro from dublin and accurascale.com Ships to everywhere else ex Birmingham. 

[Enterprisingwestern]

4 minutes ago, McC said:

indeed Accurascale.eu ships across the EU in euro from dublin and accurascale.com Ships to everywhere else except Birmingham. 

 

FIFY!

 

Mike.

[icn]

On 30/08/2022 at 11:00, Andy Hayter said:

And just to add a bit of another minor gripe; many stores offer free UK P&P (with a lower purchase value) but as a foreign purchaser I am charged P&P at cost.  Now I accept the cost of shipping is quite a bit more but the UK equivalent postage cost is not removed and the packaging costs would I assume be exactly the same.  And remember I pay French VAT on all of those elements.

I have a little sympathy for the shops who do this: orders outside the UK cost more effort to the company (customs paperwork primarily, but also more work to figure out the postage prices for such customers in the first place), and they're likely higher risk - in part because customs can and do send packages back in some countries - or the buyer can refuse to pay customs with the package being sent back similarly.

 

Is that effort and risk equivalent to the price of UK postage? I don't know, but I find it hard to quibble personally (also when I'm buying British model railway parts I don't really have much choice in suppliers : ) ).

 

All that said, I have noticed that a British coffee roaster that I sometimes buy from does indeed appear to factor in the free domestic shipping... because they only charge me just over GBP 3 postage for a 1.5kg parcel (which would usually cost GBP 12 from Royal Mail, minus whatever bulk discounts might apply). But they have a lot more volume and experience than I suspect most model railway sellers do.

 

What I find much more jarring is if a shop doesn't deduct domestic VAT (or in other words, adds a 20% surcharge for foreign orders to replace the VAT). It's rare, but some shops do it (and I'm talking about VAT registered outfits).

[DenysW]

An example that gave me a couple of surprises ...

 

From the UK I e-shopped twice in about 3 weeks with ModelBahnshop-Lippe. They subtracted German VAT and shipped with FedEx, with a modest/realistic charge. Fine. The first time the parcel went same-day, so I assumed this was standard. The second time it waited about 4-5 days to ship. Probably just that they only have one FedEx pick-up per week, but I was surprised, and concerned that my order had just evaporated. Not an issue now that I'm expecting this.

 

FedEx delivered the first package without comment or request for payment. Surprise! Especially as it was over the £135 barrier. While the second package was going through customs, I got a 'please pay' request from FedEx, and because I'm lazy I didn't check the tracking number, so didn't notice it was for the package I'd already got. Thus about a fortnight after the second package arrived, I got its VAT demand, promptly confused the two and was about to complain. Then I checked numbers, and paid up.

 

So I'm staggered that FedEx are so slow and so trusting. The Post Office operate a no-pay-no-deliver system, and I'd falsely assumed the same.

 

ModelBahnshop-Lippe discount Marklin stock enough that the extra shipping and VAT-handing fees cancel out on a reasonable order (say £300) - i've not ordered enough in one hit to assert a surplus - and carry much more Marklin stock than the UK agents. I'll use them again for reasonably-sized orders, and just expect a late VAT demand from FedEx.

[Enterprisingwestern]

4 hours ago, DenysW said:

An example that gave me a couple of surprises ...

 

From the UK I e-shopped twice in about 3 weeks with ModelBahnshop-Lippe. They subtracted German VAT and shipped with FedEx, with a modest/realistic charge. Fine. The first time the parcel went same-day, so I assumed this was standard. The second time it waited about 4-5 days to ship. Probably just that they only have one FedEx pick-up per week, but I was surprised, and concerned that my order had just evaporated. Not an issue now that I'm expecting this.

 

FedEx delivered the first package without comment or request for payment. Surprise! Especially as it was over the £135 barrier. While the second package was going through customs, I got a 'please pay' request from FedEx, and because I'm lazy I didn't check the tracking number, so didn't notice it was for the package I'd already got. Thus about a fortnight after the second package arrived, I got its VAT demand, promptly confused the two and was about to complain. Then I checked numbers, and paid up.

 

So I'm staggered that FedEx are so slow and so trusting. The Post Office operate a no-pay-no-deliver system, and I'd falsely assumed the same.

 

ModelBahnshop-Lippe discount Marklin stock enough that the extra shipping and VAT-handing fees cancel out on a reasonable order (say £300) - i've not ordered enough in one hit to assert a surplus - and carry much more Marklin stock than the UK agents. I'll use them again for reasonably-sized orders, and just expect a late VAT demand from FedEx.

 

Seems that DPD trust their customers more than Royal Mail, post delivery invoicing is the same over here, then again, RM staff treat their customers and wage payers with disdain by going on strike.

 

Mike.

[Jonboy]

My understanding was the costs of collecting it in arrears are less than the costs of running the extra warehouse space to collect the fees in advance of delivery. 

 

I have heard anecdotal stories that the,carriers are getting quicker to pass unpaid amounts to debt collection quicker than they used to, due to more people not understanding the brexit related changes and trying to ignore them.

[Bernard Lamb]

40 minutes ago, Jonboy said:

My understanding was the costs of collecting it in arrears are less than the costs of running the extra warehouse space to collect the fees in advance of delivery. 

 

I have heard anecdotal stories that the,carriers are getting quicker to pass unpaid amounts to debt collection quicker than they used to, due to more people not understanding the brexit related changes and trying to ignore them.

As is almost every other company.

In these times of high inflation it has become vital to keep cash flow coming in.

Look at what the buy now pay later firms are doing.

Benard

[Nigel Emery]

12 hours ago, DenysW said:

An example that gave me a couple of surprises ...

 

From the UK I e-shopped twice in about 3 weeks with ModelBahnshop-Lippe. They subtracted German VAT and shipped with FedEx, with a modest/realistic charge. Fine. The first time the parcel went same-day, so I assumed this was standard. The second time it waited about 4-5 days to ship. Probably just that they only have one FedEx pick-up per week, but I was surprised, and concerned that my order had just evaporated. Not an issue now that I'm expecting this.

 

FedEx delivered the first package without comment or request for payment. Surprise! Especially as it was over the £135 barrier. While the second package was going through customs, I got a 'please pay' request from FedEx, and because I'm lazy I didn't check the tracking number, so didn't notice it was for the package I'd already got. Thus about a fortnight after the second package arrived, I got its VAT demand, promptly confused the two and was about to complain. Then I checked numbers, and paid up.

 

So I'm staggered that FedEx are so slow and so trusting. The Post Office operate a no-pay-no-deliver system, and I'd falsely assumed the same.

Dispatch times from Lippe can be very random. I’ve experienced 1 day to 10 days for no apparent reason. I certainly wouldn’t be chasing until at least a week had gone by. That said it’s one of the reasons I prefer Hunerbein where possible. Always same day dispatch although twice recently I’ve been thrown by one of those bank holiday Mondays!

I was going to say we’d mentioned the FedEx invoicing in this thread before but on checking it was on a completely different forum!!

[icn]

On 13/10/2022 at 19:18, Jonboy said:

My understanding was the costs of collecting it in arrears are less than the costs of running the extra warehouse space to collect the fees in advance of delivery. 

 

I have heard anecdotal stories that the,carriers are getting quicker to pass unpaid amounts to debt collection quicker than they used to, due to more people not understanding the brexit related changes and trying to ignore them.

I think the other half of the reason may be that couriers are - or have been - more focused on B2B. And even for e-commerce to private people most deliveries would have been within-EU therefore with no need for customs. Whereas post offices have already built up all the infrastructure to ensure customs collection prior to delivery since they have dealt with significant volumes of parcels from around the world since forever.

 

Of course Brexit changed things for couriers in the UK because suddenly most as opposed to only some imports need to go past HMRC, but they do tend to design their systems with global use in mind so I'd be surprised if they changed things just for the UK.

[TTDB]

I ordered a set of PIKO S Bahn X wagen yesterday from ModelleBahn union at mid afternoon , the shop deducts the German Mwst (VAT) and the shipping with UPS was €18 this was my choice I could have paid €9 for standard but opted for express still not that bad at £15.50 you pay similar for express within the UK , however this must be at  ICE speed as it’s being  delivered to me in West Yorkshire lunchtime , fastest service Ive ever used , also with the German tax off it’s just under the VAT threshold , happy days , highly reconnect this shop.

 

Edited October 28, 2022 by TTDB

[Nigel Emery]

14 hours ago, TTDB said:

I ordered a set of PIKO S Bahn X wagen yesterday from ModelleBahn union at mid afternoon , the shop deducts the German Mwst (VAT) and the shipping with UPS was €18 this was my choice I could have paid €9 for standard but opted for express still not that bad at £15.50 you pay similar for express within the UK , however this must be at  ICE speed as it’s being  delivered to me in West Yorkshire lunchtime , fastest service Ive ever used , also with the German tax off it’s just under the VAT threshold , happy days , highly reconnect this shop.

 

Just go careful with UPS if you’re over the VAT threshold. Got one coming through from Modellebahn Union at the moment that’s been a bit of a  shambles. Delivery was supposed to be today but mid morning I took a phone call from UPS as they needed my email address to send me questions about the goods (they already had my email address as they were sending me tracking info so why the phone call). Send then the information they wanted, basically the value of the free gift that MBU threw in (wish I hadn’t bothered with now). Later an email arrived telling me how much to pay meanwhile tracking now saying delayed. The calculation is wrong, no way can I make it come to what they have but it’s only a couple of quid out so not worth worrying about. Payed up and a while later tracking changed to Tuesday. Went online to see if Monday was an option as Tuesday I’m not in (remember I’d stayed in as delivery was scheduled for today). System said yes and got an email delivery scheduled for Monday. Great! Result! 3 hours later another email, delivery scheduled for Tuesday. FFS. Next time back to the tried and tested DHL / Parcelforce route for me, at least that way I can pick a delivery day simply by paying the charges the day before. If I’m allowed to get a little political, so glad I’d didn’t vote for this!

[TTDB]

Thanks for that info I do normally use DHL and thought I’d give UPS a try asunder the threshold , if over threshold I will take your advice , I’ve no objection to paying my domestic VAT but when a vendors doesn’t deduct their own local tax can be expensive you looking £40

lwr £100 in tax with German and UK ?

[icn]

42 minutes ago, TTDB said:

Thanks for that info I do normally use DHL and thought I’d give UPS a try asunder the threshold , if over threshold I will take your advice , I’ve no objection to paying my domestic VAT but when a vendors doesn’t deduct their own local tax can be expensive you looking £40

lwr £100 in tax with German and UK ?

I suspect it's not double tax, but rather a 19% bonus for the seller. I've experienced this once or twice with German (non-railway) shops, some of whom like to view Swiss customers - who would be their primary non-EU market - as a goldmine.

Edited October 29, 2022 by icn

[TTDB]

Maybe it may be a good idea to compile a list of ships who do deduct their domestic VAt well as said my experience so far who do are 

http://modellbahnunion.com

 

And Swiss HOm specialist 

 

https://modellexklusiv.de/

 

We are talking an average deduction of £30 analogue and up to £50 on DCC loco and of course you will only pay UK VAT on the net price , I did a very rough calculation, on a loco coating £300 net you would save nearly £70

 

loco net £300. 

post.       £15

Fees.       £8

total.      £387.60

 

inxluding German Mwst tax 

 

loco.       £357

poat.      £15

fees.        £8

total.      £456

 

rhats some saving 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 30, 2022 by TTDB

[DenysW]

On 13/10/2022 at 23:52, Nigel Emery said:

I was going to say we’d mentioned the FedEx invoicing in this thread before but on checking it was on a completely different forum!!

A couple of follow-ups, still on ModelBahnShop-Lippe and FedEx.

 

It's very, very easy on the ModelBahnShop-Lippe website to miss that they don't have the item in stock in the quantity you've tried to order, and they expect the supplier (here Marklin) to re-stock them in 4-7 days. Completely out-of-stock is much more obvious. For me this was that they had a few Z-scale powered buffers, but not 6. I suspect that the erratic dispatch times noted above by @Nigel Emery are partly down to shipping only completed orders outside Germany (maybe outside the EU).

 

Also: FedEx send you a piece of paper called an Invoice a couple of weeks after you've paid them VAT+handling online. I tried to confirm that this was a 'if you've already paid this, please ignore' letter, but their system does not have a speak-to-a-human phone number option that I could find. I filled in the query form, got an automated reply saying they'd respond in 5-10 days and a month later have heard nothing. An irritation. I was quite suspicious when one of the pre-cooked categories for complaints was double-payment. Very unprofessional of them, plus they are adding cost to their business by sloppy communication. Not impressed.

 

I did get some entertainment value and improved my knowledge of German geography by tracking the second FedEx parcel as in ping-ponged round Fedex offices in Frankfurt for 2 or 3 days before setting off for the UK. The first parcel via Koln was boringly direct.

 

[Stefan88]

I have found that most German shops (certainly all the ones I've been looking at that are still willing to send to the UK) are deducting the VAT, Austrian ones too. A couple of Dutch shops refused, so I immediately added them to my 'ignore' list, and a Swedish place will deduct it but won't give postage quotes until you order.

 

Modellbahn Union, Schmidt-Wissen and Lippe are the cheapest on shipping in that order, the former with UPS and Schmidt with DHL (delivered by Parcelforce). There are then several more that still charge reasonable rates (i.e. between €13-18) such as Modellbahn Kramm, Menzels Lokschuppen, Hünerbein, Gütersloh.

 

The freight forwarder I used to use extensively before the brexit nonsense came in to force haven't changed their prices, I can send stuff from them in Germany from €18, both drop shipment - i.e. send something to them and they send it directly on to me, or combined shipments. I have done both a few times now with ebay purchases where I didn't want to pay VAT on second hand goods and/or items costing less than international postage as well as from sellers that didn't want to post to the UK. And as long as the seller hasn't included an invoice, you can specify the value to the forwarder.

 

Re. times, the slowest I've had was a coach from Italy sent with UPS - it was sat in their warehouse for 3 weeks! Total delivery time 3 and a half weeks all in, for something worth €40. A loco I bought from another seller in Italy at the same time also sent by UPS and that took a little over 2 weeks to arrive. They are however by far the cheapest way of getting anything out of Italy (don't pay more than €18).

 

Austria is still on the pricier side of things and I now very rarely buy mail order from there. Memoba used to charge €11, then after the rules changes they doubled it pretty quickly after lots of UK orders below the VAT threshold, and then upped it again to €33! Going by their postage tables its cheaper to send it to the Falklands than to blighty! So I've completely stopped ordering from them. Modellbahn Diskont do it for €23.50 so I've ordered from them a few times as and when they had stuff I wanted on offer that I couldn't get anywhere else.

 

Another point I discovered recently is that anything classed as 'dangerous goods' can no longer be sent to the UK. I bought 5 small tins of enamel paint from Elita in Germany thinking I could bundle these in with a few other orders at my freight forwarder. These are high quality RAL paints that you can't get in the UK, and they won't send them here either. It was only when they arrived at my freight forwarder that I discovered they can't be sent to the UK at all as they are flammable and therefore 'dangerous goods'. Only option is to return to sender at cost (would cost nearly the same as the order total) or to send to my mother in Austria (again they only offered a ridiculous courier amount that equalled the order total). Not sure what I'll do with this one.

This seems to have been a more recent addition to the post-brexit nonsense as I was still able to get the paints sent to me in 2021.

 

Its not all bad though, getting new sound decoders for between £65-75 a pop certainly beats paying UK prices for blank decoders! Even with VAT someone is making a killing there with their monopolies on the UK distribution of these!

[michl080]

3 hours ago, Stefan88 said:

The freight forwarder I used to use extensively before the brexit nonsense came in to force haven't changed their prices, I can send stuff from them in Germany from €18, both drop shipment - i.e. send something to them and they send it directly on to me, or combined shipments. I have done both a few times now with ebay purchases where I didn't want to pay VAT on second hand goods and/or items costing less than international postage as well as from sellers that didn't want to post to the UK. And as long as the seller hasn't included an invoice, you can specify the value to the forwarder.

 

That sounds interesting. Can you tell a bit more about that forwarder and the procedure?

Michael

[Stefan88]

9 hours ago, michl080 said:

 

That sounds interesting. Can you tell a bit more about that forwarder and the procedure?

Michael

 

There are several, but the one I use is called MyGermany. You create an account (if I recall pay a nominal €1 one off fee), get given a German postal address (usually your full name followed by their business address) and then send all purchases you wish to that address. You then enter the order details as expected deliveries, either as a drop shipment (i.e. something to have sent straight on to yourself) or a normal shipment. For the latter, once you have received all the orders you wish to combine you then select all these orders and request a consolidation, once they have boxed everything up together you can select the required delivery service and have it sent to you in the UK.

 

You get 60 days free storage for each order, after that it is €1 per day per order if I recall.

 

Pre-brexit nonsense I used to combine between 10-20 orders in to a single shipment costing around €40-60 depending on weight and extra insurance. With each order having around €7 domestic postage instead of €18 international (or in some cases free domestic postage) it quickly saved an awful lot of money in postage over 4 years. But now the VAT rules apply so I've kept the orders a lot lower to keep it below the VAT threshold.

 

Example, last consolidation was 5 orders and the combined shipping was €18. Currently I have 3 separate orders sat with them, a Liliput DMU, a nice tram and an LS Models coach, all ebay auction wins that otherwise would have had €18 postage each and VAT added or not sent at all as seller doesn't send to GB. I'll probably add some spare parts from Piko to this and then have it shipped over, likely to cost €18 with DHL.

 

A few other points to mention about all this, firstly you specify the value of each order (so for example an LS Models DB 101 could be worth €10...), however if it arrives before you have entered it or they enter it as the parcel details don't match what you have entered they will put it in themselves and usually put in a low value (my Liliput DMU was entered as €10 as they put it in when the sender address didn't match what I had put in). If an invoice is included by the seller then they will put in the order total (incl. postage), hence a faulty Liliput DB 110 was put in as €59 instead of the €52 I had put without postage.

 

Another one, some of the delivery services already come with insurance included but this isn't made clear. DHL for example already include insurance up to €500, so no need to buy the extra it offers when you put in the value (thus paying say €18 instead of €38).

Edited December 4, 2022 by Stefan88

[michl080]

Thanks for the information!

 

That is a very interesting concept. Never heard of it before.

 

Now my question is: Living in Germany, is there someting comparable in the opposite direction?

 

Michael

[MarshLane]

1 hour ago, michl080 said:

Thanks for the information!

 

That is a very interesting concept. Never heard of it before.

 

Now my question is: Living in Germany, is there someting comparable in the opposite direction?

 

Michael

Yes there are similar forwarding companies in the UK that can send packages to Europe or the US.  I have used MyUS.com to get stuff from the USA to the UK on a few occasions, found them really good - lot of reviews around talk of problems but Ive had an account for three years and its worked fine every time.  A couple of issues with wrong import codes being put down, but an email with a screen shot and my description of the item saying it should come under code 1234-5678 for model trains has got it changed.

 

They have a UK and US storage facility, so you get a UK shipping address - and I have found them really good.  They talk about repacking boxes, but in reality I have found they pack all the boxes and packages that come into one bigger box.  I like that as it gives more protection to the goods. They give you 30 days free storage, but will send from a UK address that you have goods shipped to, to Germany (or any EU country) if that helps.

 

Rich

[SBB1]

Does anyone have any experience with ordering from modellhobby.se to the UK? I found an item I've been hunting for a while on their website at a very good price, and placed the order last Thursday. Tax was deducted from the total (great!), shipping was calculated after the order was placed - as per their T&Cs - at 599kr or £47 (ouch!), and the order has shown as 'Shipped' and 'Completed' since yesterday in my orders history. The only issue is that I can find anything by way of a tracking number and don't even know who the courier is. I can drop them an email in Google-translated Swedish, but it would be good to know if anyone's had a similar experience.

 

Cheers,

 

Andrew

[Andy Hayter]

If it has gone by standard national mail services - and it may very well have done so - then your parcel is very likely to get snarled up with postal strikes in the UK.  Further there will be no tracking unless specifically requested by the seller.

[SM42]

On 13/12/2022 at 13:06, SBB1 said:

Does anyone have any experience with ordering from modellhobby.se to the UK? I found an item I've been hunting for a while on their website at a very good price, and placed the order last Thursday. Tax was deducted from the total (great!), shipping was calculated after the order was placed - as per their T&Cs - at 599kr or £47 (ouch!), and the order has shown as 'Shipped' and 'Completed' since yesterday in my orders history. The only issue is that I can find anything by way of a tracking number and don't even know who the courier is. I can drop them an email in Google-translated Swedish, but it would be good to know if anyone's had a similar experience.

 

Cheers,

 

Andrew

 

You could probably use English to communicate. 

 

As in in most Scandinavian countries, English is widely spoken and in Sweden something like 85% can speak English so there is a good chance they would be able to respond with the info you desire about how your parcel has been sent in English. 

 

Andy