Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Is there a Brexit effect on deliveries from abroad?
After hearing reported horror stories, I have been anxious to understand how our changed relationship with the EU might affect the delivery of goods ordered online from overseas. Here are a few of my own experiences:
Christmas presents I ordered from Italy on 6th December were picked up in Verona on 11th and delivered (in Harefield) on 15th December and (in Ipswich and in Framlingham) on 16th. All three had travelled via Stansted. Things ordered from Paris even as late as 19th December were delivered here on 22nd, also via Stansted.
Last year through Crowd Farming, I “adopted” an orange tree near Valencia. This entitled me to four 10kg boxes of oranges. The first two were ordered to arrive on 7th December, the third to arrive on 17th January and the fourth to arrive in February. The first two arrived on 10th December after their journey by road was disturbed by the congestion around the Dover-Calais route in the run up to Brexit. The delivery date of the third box was put back to 21st because bad weather (Storm Filomena) delayed fruit picking. The box was picked up in Valencia by DHL on 18th and delivered here by ParcelForce on 21st. There were no extra charges which might have been because the goods themselves had been paid for the previous year and only the delivery service was paid for in 2021.
On 12th January I ordered some clothes from LL Bean in the USA. Their website detected that I was in UK and quoted prices inclusive of “taxes and duties” (this was their practice also last time I used them two years ago). The transaction was handled for LL Bean by a company called Borderfree. The package was shipped on 18th and delivered here on 23rd with no further formalities.
So far, so good. It would be hard to say that either of these two cases show any kind of adverse Brexit effect. I shall watch closely what happens the next time I order something from inside the EU. Especially if it is likely to come by road.
Tags for Forum Posts: brexit deliveries
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Shar on
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On the other hand a printer I ordered from Canon without realising it was coming from Mainland Europe has already been delayed by a week, with UPS updating me three times a day.
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Permalink Reply by Bob Ruggles on
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Understood there was No issues of products coming into UK.
Only issues getting trucks into France
Joke majority are empty, returning trucks. Who are delivering orders from EU Countries
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Permalink Reply by James Ingram on
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Small household things from France and Sweden ordered at end of year all 'lost' or delayed. But mail from China arrived ahead of schedule!
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Permalink Reply by Leo V on
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Huge delays on equipment from Germany. The Uk dealers suddenly declared they couldn't supply and then over 6 weeks delay from German headquarters. This is a major industrial German group and they are having issues. Can't think what the smaller players will be doing...
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We have had tremendous difficulty delivering our products to Europe, with the courier companies wanting to charge our customers duty, VAT, and a fee for administering the customs papers. VAT is properly due, but customs duty isn't - and the courier's own costs ween't disclosed to us. We make our products entirely in the Uk, (Hence no duty due) but the courier companies seem to have assumed non UK manufacture, We are a small start up, but 40% of our goods are exported - and so far this month not a single parcel has yet been delivered in the EU and we have also had delays in other countries. We also sent parcels by post - not one of those has yet been delivered either.
Prelockdown, post to the EU generally took a week, and couriers 3- 5 days. This is one of our customers, today. "Here is my feedback as a European customer wanting to carry on buying goods from the UK. I'm now purposely stopping to buy anything from the UK because a) it's hard for companies to show upfront the final cost of the product with the VAT & import duty b) therefore I'm not taking any financial risks and will only buy the same product from within the EU which is a real bummer as I want to support UK companies, especially small and innovative ones like yours."
We are lucky, we have a unique product and I think we will continue to sell. Others won't
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Permalink Reply by Ruben on
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the experiences I have heard of are consistent with this article in the BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55734277
in summary, even if VAT continues to be applied by the source country and there is no import duty on goods, parcels still need to cross customs and couriers are levying handling fees.
The personal experience from my company is that all our exports to EU now need accompanying paperwork as we did for anything going to the rest of the work, including standardised customs codes and country of origin.
As our EU exports are roughly as much as out RoW exports, this means doubling our paperwork.
Our recent-ish experience when dealing with countries that decided to be less cooperative:
- shipping wooden frames to US required us to send a written breakdown of all the woods used in the frames, with countries of origin for each and certificates of sustainability for the wood. We are talking 5 frames, not a shipping container.
- shipping pens (also to US), we had to show the chemical elements in the composition of the ink because they decided they were toxic substances
- and then there's India. They changed something in customs 3 years ago and for a period of 6 weeks we had a black hole where nobody knew where any parcel were. After that, all the couriers (even premium like UPS and FedEx) contract out customs clearance to local firms, so our customers are hit with massive bills of 40%+ cost of sold goods.
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Wow. Well done for persisting. I better get prepared... so many bits go into a manufactured product..
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we ship a fair amount of goods a year, so most of our shipping info is automated.
We have had to rewrite the software that interacts with Royal Mail because so much more information is required.
Only this morning the warehouse have told me that we are having parcels stopped in transit to Ireland because some products are not defined correctly in the system and miss that information.
This was not required a month ago, because that would have been a domestic shipment. We have now lost a domestic market of 450m people.
I have no doubt that after 10 years we will be operating in a new normality and this will be long forgotten, but we have a long road ahead of us where both us and the EU will need to adapt supply chains.
We receive lots of goods via air and sea, but EU was our main source of road supply. When it comes to goods with a long shelf-life, it's easy enough to buy elsewhere. When it comes to fresh food, it's trickier. So we'll have to get used to these "ripen at bowl" (which essentially means they were picked while still green and frozen for months).
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Definitely something going on. Tried to get a Hermes quote for a delivery to Germany
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Trying to buy stuff off amazon and ebay is a waste of time. No stock. Suppliers have no stock. The supply chain has ground to a halt.
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Permalink Reply by Christian on
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My family sent me a box of food from Italy with DHL on the 13th of January and apparently it arrived yesterday at Heatrow and it's now with customs. They sent a similar box in November and it was delivered in 2 days
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Permalink Reply by Muriel Zaccuri on
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And they did not accept a British card either for a delivery within EU
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