Importing from USA

[party_pete]

Has anyone first hand experience of importing from the USA?

I've read pages of info but haven't found the basic answers I need in one place!

The company I wish to buy from have said;

Once we have received payment for the shipment, we will ship the merchandise. We will also need your international FedEx or UPS number to charge when we ship. All importing (duty and tax) costs will also be charged to this account

All seams pretty simple but I haven't got a Fedex or UPS account and i'm unsure how to work out how much duty and tax i'm likely to pay. It will be approx. $2000 worth of stock. Don't want to get caught out with a huge bill!

Hope someone can give me their thoughts

[oldhasbeen]

Hi Pete

We do loads of importing and always use UPS - some shipments are medium weight, some are megga weight but we've found the difference in price between courier and the "slow boat to china" route (i.e USPS - United States Postal Service) is suprisingly negligible in most instances and considering USPS can taken months rather than UPS which takes days, it's a no brainer really. Also like the tracking facility with UPS - as soon as you have your consignment number, you can follow your order from airport to airport to the UPS depot which is good.

You can open an account with either courier - that means your supplier will take the money for the goods, but then the courier will invoice you for the shipping and import duties separately.

Personally I prefer to "pay up" as I go to avoid building up a lot of charges on a single invoice. None of the US suppliers we use have ever had a problem with us not having an account with UPS - they just charge for the goods and the shipping together. When the UPS driver turns up, we get the cheque book out and pay the duties - all done and dusted.

Courier handling fees for UPS are £11 per shipment plus the VAT import duty - this can be ridiculously inaccurate as over the years we've been charged anywhere between 12% and 22% - they do seem to pick numbers out of a hat sometimes. Bear in mind also that you're paying VAT duty on the total of the goods AND shipping!

If you're VAT registered then obviously you can offset the VAT you pay.

If the company you wish to buy from insist you have an account with UPS or Fedex, then you shouldn't have any problem setting one up. I did make enquiries before about an account to see if would save us any money (i.e get a better shipping rate since both the sender and recipient have accounts) - but it made no difference, so I prefer to stick to the pay as you go route.

Hope that's of some help!

[party_pete]

Brilliant!

Thanks ever so for your comments.

[oldhasbeen]

Hi Pete

We do loads of importing and always use UPS - some shipments are medium weight, some are megga weight but we've found the difference in price between courier and the "slow boat to china" route (i.e USPS - United States Postal Service) is suprisingly negligible in most instances and considering USPS can taken months rather than UPS which takes days, it's a no brainer really. Also like the tracking facility with UPS - as soon as you have your consignment number, you can follow your order from airport to airport to the UPS depot which is good.

You can open an account with either courier - that means your supplier will take the money for the goods, but then the courier will invoice you for the shipping and import duties separately.

Personally I prefer to "pay up" as I go to avoid building up a lot of charges on a single invoice. None of the US suppliers we use have ever had a problem with us not having an account with UPS - they just charge for the goods and the shipping together. When the UPS driver turns up, we get the cheque book out and pay the duties - all done and dusted.

Courier handling fees for UPS are £11 per shipment plus the VAT import duty - this can be ridiculously inaccurate as over the years we've been charged anywhere between 12% and 22% - they do seem to pick numbers out of a hat sometimes. Bear in mind also that you're paying VAT duty on the total of the goods AND shipping!

If you're VAT registered then obviously you can offset the VAT you pay.

If the company you wish to buy from insist you have an account with UPS or Fedex, then you shouldn't have any problem setting one up. I did make enquiries before about an account to see if would save us any money (i.e get a better shipping rate since both the sender and recipient have accounts) - but it made no difference, so I prefer to stick to the pay as you go route.

Hope that's of some help!

[oldhasbeen]

Ooer - don't know where that duplicate post came from (look at the time differences!). Anyway, ignore last post as it's no different from the first one!