Selling Overseas - Customs Declarations

[medusa]

no, no smiling here. totally serious.

[iori]

Me again,you have, Jasmin, I'm afraid, been left up in the air over this question. I have answered you in a somewhat jocular fashion but may have passed bad information on to you, whilst Medusa has offered you veiled warnings but has told you very little. If you want to know the true situation then go to 'www.royalmail.com' customs information. That however also tells you nothing about penalties! There is a warning that the country to which you are sending can send your package back! But C & E or HMRC as they are now, is an eight hundred year old organisation to whom 'smilies' are quite foreign (and therefore dutiable!) and whose powers (used to be anyway) are almost biblical (old testament variety). That being said you are not exporting arms or other nasties and prohibited articles but what are essentially 'bangles and beads' whose value is whatever any one cares to put on them! Should have followed my mothers advice:- 'never give advice'
Yours
Iori

[ps_bond]

hmmm... well actually if you send stuff as a sample or gift and it's not, technically it's fraud.

Not just technically - actually. And, as mentioned, HMRC have wide-ranging powers; I wouldn't advise crossing them.

As for faulty items, if you write to HMRC and explain that you've already paid once for the item (providing proof of purchase, proof of payment et al) they're usually pretty good about things. I know people who have shipped stuff back to the US for warranty service and gone down that route.

[medusa]

It wasn't a veiled warning (though if taken as such, Mr Bond has clarified) and I said as much as I could from my own experience which is sending antique jewellery which is exempt and that I send it as costume jewellery to deter thieves. The few times I've sent new stuff I've made, I mark as costume jewellery but put the full value on. In years of selling stuff to the USA, the only time anything has gone missing was a 1940s kid's cardigan. I've never had jewellery go astray and I've sent out stuff which had sold for £600+

In terms of returning goods for repair, I would imagine that is exempt under the origin of goods exemption. That is, if you are returning it, you are returning it to the place it originally came from to you, and when they send it back to you, they are essentially doing the same.

post 11 was a leg pull, the limited smilies are along the top of the text box.