Shipping from US to UK

Any tips on shipping a player into the UK?

Is it enough to have it labelled as a gift?

Has anyone here (in the UK) been clobbered with customs duty?

Cheers

When I ordered my Empeg from CarPlayer, they thoughtfully labelled it as "hard drive - $89", so import duty was (IIRC) only about fifteen quid. If it's being shipped from one private individual to another you might get away with the "gift" defence, but if it's from a company then that might not wash.

Steve.

I shipped something to Belgium a week or two ago from my company marked "Promotional Gift" and marked it's value as $1 on the invoice. It got there and it wasn't promotional or a gift.

I've done the same thing to Canada many times. It always gets there. Always using UPS or FedEx.

My first player was bought from a guy in the US and was shipped over by his mother who, not only labeled it as a Car Stereo instead of a gift. She also put the wrong value in ($900 for a 10g when I only paid the guy $350) so I got stung for about £120 of import duty. However I managed to get it reduced by 50% after he wrote to customs explaining it was mis-labeled.

My Carplayer unit was opened by customs so I ended up paying £60 on that too.

Yeah, I got clobbered by customs!

IIRC, even if it's a gift, if the value is over something insignificant they charge import duty and VAT anyway!