I bought it!

raecarter

raecarter

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The Kala Ka smhc got it from musicguymic even though im in the uk. The fact he upgraded to aquilas and set up it properly and it came with a case only made it 20quid more than buying just the uke from a shop in the uk. Im so excited does anyone know how long it will take to ship to uk normally? Rae:D
 
excellent, well done, but don't forget you will have to pay import duty, VAT and a handling charge, when this comes into the UK

enjoy it!
 
Congrats on the purchase.

There's a chance you may get a slight whack from HM Revenue and Customs, but that additional import duty/tax is not usually too extreme (although I did get disproportionately clobbered once! :D ). Hope your uke sneaks through without extra charges.

Not sure how long stuff usually takes to get from Mike to here. Melissa (Ukerazy) had a bit of a nightmare with hers due to some strange goings on at the German customs office while the uke was in transit, but it all ended happily.

Under normal circumstances I'd give it a couple of weeks before getting curious. That said, I've occasionally had instruments get to me from USA in under a week.
 
i didnt know that!

If I do incur costs etc how do I know about them? Delivery was 32pound?
 
raecarter said:
If I do incur costs etc how do I know about them? Delivery was 32pound?
Click to expand...

Either you'll get a note saying to pick the package up from a depot, in which case you pay before they hand it over, or sometimes you get an invoice through the post from the carrier some time after delivery. Once I got an invoice about three months after the instrument arrived...
 
Oh mine was totally mental and can't be used to judge anything in the real world.

I bought a mandolin from a US store that had slashed prices by an insane amount. I paid £199 (about £100 at the time - exchange rate was good!) for the mandolin and got hit for an unreasonable amount of duty/tax. It was obviously an error, but never really got straightened out.

Don't worry, the extra charge is usually little more than a minor inconvenience, and some stuff sneaks through without it.
 
I had a guitar (a Gibson) from Canada, and the seller helpfully, but cheekily, filled the customs form out saying it was worth $100 (as opposed to £700!!)

I was charged by invoice from the shipping courier about a month later - as I recall it was £12.

If you go on the HMRC website or google it, there is a table of import charges that explains exactly what % you will pay - if (and it is a big if) it gets caught by customs.

If it is held by the post office for payment (ie if it was not send by a courier, but by US mail) you may also need to pay them a handling charge - I recently had some camera gear through from the US - didnt pay any import duty, but had to pay the post office £7 just for holding on to it - that was annoying!
 
I've bought a few guitars from Japan. Import duty is only about 1.5%. It's the VAT which is the killer because you pay it on the sale price, the postage and the import duty. Then the Royal Mail will charge you a whack (I once paid £13.50) as a handling charge. My own experience is that they will not hand it over until you have paid, which you can do online.

One guitar I bought took about 10 days to arrive from Japan but then sat in customs for over three weeks!!

Giving a false price to reduce duties is a MASSIVE gamble. If you claim a £700 guitar is only worth £100 if it goes missing you have lost £600. Personally I wouldn't risk it. Not only that but it is classed as fraud and the penalties are very serious indeed!

Also, £32 is a lot for postage BUT that is probably because of the hard case. I would have bought it without case and then bought one over here.

Hope this helps,
Ian.
 
Last edited:
Hi Rae , it works out roughly as follows, if they decide to do it. it also depends on how much Mike put's the value down as and what value he shows for shipping. As someone else said the biggest problem is the VAT and the Handling charge these companies even the post office add on

Cost if Uke =£127 + shipping £23 = £150, x 1.015 duty = £152.25 + VAT @15% = £175.08 + charge for handling aprrox £10

Total cost = £185.08 approx.
Hope it slips through without . it's a bit of a pain to think that of the total cost 32% is for shipping and governments and companies providing nothing.

I'm really grumpy tonight!
 
heres hoping then

I work for her majesty lol so maybe a phone call to customs will help if I get mugged off
 
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