A Question About Amazon.co.uk and Customs...
 

It's been a while since I bought stuff from amazon.co.uk. I know that they don't charge VAT if outside of the UK but would I be charged a customs fee? I have ordered mostly cds from them and I never had an issue before, have things changed in the last months?

I'm trying to buy some dvds this time but I don't want to be paying an outrageous fee when they enter the US. Have any of you been charged custom fees before?

Thanks for the comments.

I'm in CT and I've never had custom fees charged when ordering from them. And my most recent orders have arrived 4 or 5 days after being shipped (seems faster than when I started ordering from them years ago).

I order from them semi regularly and as long as I keep the order to £120 or less, I have no problems with customs

(New Zealand BTW)

Thanks for the replies guys. Is it true my tv won't play a pal dvd? I have a regionless dvd player so would it depend on the dvd player or the tv? By the way I am in California, USA.

As long as your DVD player converts PAL to NTSC the DVDs should play fine. Do you know if your player handles the conversion?

I have ordered from them at least 20 times and have never had to pay customs. I don't think I have ever had an order over about 75 pounds however.

I picked up Disney's Rocket Man from Amazon.uk recently since Disney apparently is never going to release it here. Funny movie. When I got my credit card bill the conversion ended up being closer to 2x than 1.5x. BTW a cheap Philips 642 can easily be made region free and will play Pal discs with no problem.

You made my day. The Philips 642 is actually the dvd player I have. I'm going to take the plunge then and get the Ally McBeal dvds along with their superior version of Twin Peaks season 1. Thanks for the replies guys.

In Canada, I get charged customs on every amazon.co.uk order. It never fails, I think the CDN customs agents flag packages from amazon.

it was available
 

check it out here, http://www.amazon.com/Rocketman-Roge...?ie=UTF8&s=dvd, although I think you were better off getting the region 2 disk

I believe the rule of thumb in the US is that you won't be hit with customs charges as long as the merchandise total is under US$200.