Made an order for 7 DVD's on Saturday , 1 in stock the other 6 pre-orders. (I am in England)

Total for shipping was $19.90 (Used the 15% link to virtually get free shipping).

Got home from work yesterday and I had a card from UPS stating that there was a customs charge of £18.35 to pay for 1 DVD.

1) CDNOW sent this package UPS Worldwide express even though when ordering I selected Standard Postage. I have gone into CDNOW this morning and placed another order to see how the postage is calculated, selected Standard (which I beleive is DHL Air) and it still shows up on the order as UPS Worldwide Express. Surely this is not standard postage practises.

2) Looking at the email to tell me the DVD had been shipped, it states a charge of $17.71 for Shipping. CDNOW have yet to explain this one.

3) The customs charge is extremely excessive, the import duty on 1 DVD should be around £3-4. The charge I beleive only occured due to the parcel being sent UPS World Express, as the package would have been checked and immmediate duty applied. Even though the DVD was only $18.99.

I have contacted CDNOW and they state that I selected it but its seems that Standard postage is now UPS Worldwide Express, this is surely incorrect.

They have yet to explain why the charge of $17.71 for shipping has been applied (normally when you place a large order, the shipping is totally charged for on the first item (should have been $19.90) and then there is no subsequent charges for shipping on each parcel as it comes due for release). By doing this i.e 1 DVD at a time, Custom charges are normally avoided).

So if I pay the charge for £18.35, I would have paid around £40.00 for 1 DVD, to say the least I am very p***ed off !

I have now cancelled the order and will be contacting CDNOW later on today, to try and resolve this problem.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I placed an order a couple of months ago for four DVDs, and they were automatically shipped by UPS Worldwide. It seems that up to 3 DVDs go standard shipping, which is DHL Worldmail, and 4 and over go via express shipping, which is UPS Worldwide.

UPS promptly charged me for GST, plus a customs handling fee, on the arrival of the DVDs in Australia, despite them not exceedingly the AUD250 limit before goods have to be declared to Customs and before GST needs to be applied. Cost me a hefty packet and arguments with UPS have so far been less than fruitless. UPS came up with some garbage that they have to do this, but I know that this is utter rubbish as it has been confirmed as such by Customs.

It would seem that UPS pull the same garbage story worldwide.

Moral of the story is that I now do not order more than 3 DVDs in an order, so that they always travel DHL Worldmail at the cost of USD7.20. With CD Now's 15% off coupons, at least I get the shipping free with a bit more off the DVDs above the 30% pre-order discount.

So I commiserate with your problem, and you are certainly not alone.



Ian

Thanks for your response.

I think they should at least make it very clear that this is the case.

I have now written to CDNOW again and will post the reply.

Had the same problem posted already 6 weeks ago.
UPS charges way too much but you cannot convince them or complain.Problem also is that CDNOW puts a bill in the shipment for the full price , discounts are not mentioned.
UPS also charges costs and taxes over the weight of the package!
I refused 2 deliveries after a lot of discussions with them, in the end CDNOW promised to credit me for a part of the above than normal costs but finally they told UPS to return the 2 shipments.
The credited me for the costs of the dvd's but not for the larger part of the shipping cost because they had already shipped 1 title out of both orders for which you had to pay most of the shipping costs of the total order.
So I learned my lesson the hard way!
Lost about 25 $ but would have lost a lot more if I had paid the UPS bills!
Now I am careful never to have more shipping costs than 7.20 $.

I think the policy at cdnow is to split orders with different release dates into no more than two packages. Hence, if you had six dvd's, all with differing release dates, they would ship the first one when available including the total postage, then wait until the remaining five had been released before shipping them together. Here in England, that would almost certainly attract customs, probably on both packages!!

I only order two at a time now, haven't been stung yet

I order always three, you get 'free' shipping on the third disc anyway and since they're shipping in two batches, with two DVD's you won't have a problem.

DHL ships through Germany to the Netherlands so the packages are already in the EEC and you never pay taxes!
Ups Express ships (faster than DHL) directly from the USA into the Netherlands which means taxes.
So always be sure to use the small shipments option with shipping by DHL.

Just found out yesterday that the shipping from Germany into the Netherlands does not make a difference for Dutch Customs.
Had to pay importtax for the first time on my latest shipment.
Tax is based on the amount as stated on the outside and invoice of the package.
As this is always a much higher amount than the real amount mentioned on the shipping e-mail, have to write to customs to ask them to correct the bill.
I have asked CDNOW several times why the amount on the invoices are always incorrect : their system can not handle discounts etc..!!
Hope this is not gonna happen with all future shipments (Godfather box, etc..)

i live in england and was stung once with a £22 bill from her Majesty’s customs and excise on 3 dvd's. after a lot of pissing about i found this out.

If you import dvd's over the value of £18 then you have to pay tax and vat on the dvd.

so if you ordered 7 dvd's then thats bound to be over £18 so u will get an import bill. it does not matter what shipping method is used, it all depends if customs opens it or not.

if you import a dvd that cost say £25 then customs see's its over £18 so they add an import tax of 2.5% which makes the dvd cost £25.63 and then they add v.a.t on to that at 17.5% which brings the value of the dvd to £30.12. you have already paid £25 so the customs then send u a bill for £5.12.

sorry if you know all this already. if its a bit confising email me at [email protected] i would be happy to expalain it better if you like.

what dvd's did you order?

could you not have odered them from any where else i order all my r1 dvd's from www.Play247.com prices are in pounds and there is free shipping.

Thanks for all the info on the customs charges, I already understand that. It may prove useful for other users.


The issue was that I ordered 7 DVD's but only one was in the parcel.

As the parcel was sent by Worldwide Express it had to have quick clearance on the parcel and therefore I was stung for custom charges. The trouble is the customs charge on one DVD should only be around £4 - £5 at the very most. the charge was for £18.35.


I told UPS to get lost, I am also trying to get some sort of answer from CD now on there shipping policy.

I have played around with orders on CDNOW and if you order more than 3 it goes UPS Worldwide Express, 3 and under DHL worldmail. The issue is that during selction for postage you still select standard no matter how many DVD's are in the parcel but upon receipt of the order email, it then states how the parcel will be sent.

I also use Play247, you should keep an eye on there prices, sometimes when pre-orders are put up at first the price is £17.99, then the price sometimes changes, Snow White 2 Disc was £17.99 at first then it came down to £15.99. They do not however change the price in your order. Just ordeer another copy and cancel the original.

but I have now ordered again from CDNOW using the $10 of $49.90 link on the bargain forum and have had no problems.

I have imported over 200 DVD's and have only been stung for customs charges 5-6 times. They do not check every parcel, although at certain times of the year, they seem to have a purge.