Bike Discount DE - Import Costs over £135

Yeah, if over £135 you pay it when it hits the UK...the courier invoices you and once paid they deliver it. Expect an admin/handling fee by courier as well...so add about £15 for that as well.

I'm saying that, my experience is a single payment requested that is broken down into bits...but I don't tend to pay attention to the breakdown as I need to pay it all to get the bits...

and £12 extra if you want royal mail to deliver on a saturday

but yes, but duty could be more than 4.5% for some parts i believe.

I found out the hard way

Import duty depends where the parts were made. In the EU, nothing. Elsewhere, is 5-15% iirc

then VAT and shipping fees

(German VAT should be removed)

although, last couple of times i have placed orders there were no duties charged, how lucky are you feeling?

Assume you'll pay them but you might find you don't.

They’re Fox forks, so Taiwan is the CoO which I think is 4% duty.  The caveat is that the HMG code states for “telescopic forks made from steel” there doesn’t appear to be another material choice available.

I got some Zeb Ultimates from Germany before Christmas.

I worked on the 4% but when they arrived it worked out more like 7%. Still saved more than £150 compared to the cheapest I could find in the UK that were actually available.

Handling fee was £12

Did you query that value, Tracey, or did you just accept it?  Was it RM/PF or someone else?

Just paid it over the phone. There was a code on the lable that the shop applies and its that code that Parcelforce use to determine the duty.

I got stung by a delivery being split into two and the same invoice put on both packages so I had to pay twice. This wasn’t bikediscount though.

There are a lot of very cheap Rockshox SID forks on bike discount, so thanks for this thread

Some very cheap Fox too.....

They are also some Fox shocks. Some of them I could see the 4 letter code so I put it in Fox website, and they were from various Ghost and Lapierre bikes.

On this, is duty/ VAT payable on the delivery charge?

Is the duty charged on the original price ex VAT or including VAT?

My forks although I paid in pounds had a conversion rate when bought. That's why the price of Euro parts fluctuate daily on the sites.

However their paperwork thats attached for customs was in Euros so that is what's taken for calculation by Parcelforce so you could win or loose depending on the exchange rate they apply.

I was happy with the saving so didn't go into the full breakdown

Just bought from them.

Saved the German VAT at checkout, but added back on @20% this end, and around £30 of charges for customs to take their chunk. On £150 sale.

I’ve backed out.  They finally responded to a request for the fork id and it’s from a 2022 model, so whilst it’s a good price, it’s been sat for a loooong while.

Purchased some SID 29s before Christmas, cost on Bike discount DE was 230.45  + Shipping costs of 17.13

Few days later got an E-mail from DHL asking for £ 72.39 had to pay via card over the phone for them to release /deliver.

Considering used shocks on eBay where about 250-300 it was an OK deal for box fresh forks.

Hoe that helps

Thanks beicmynydd - as I’ve seen some brakes on there that are 210 plus 17.23 shipping with dhl so by your charge I should be around the 50 ish quid extra charge in the uk which still makes them significantly cheaper than here - thank you

Anyone had any orders come via dhl from Germany then moved to Parcelforce when hitting the uk?

I’ve got that now and it’s awaiting customs clearance with Parcelforce

it says I should get notified via letter - any idea how long this will take as the post is crap near me at the moment, is there any way of paying it over the phone before getting the letter or similar?

any timescales when at customs how long it takes from anyone whose used bike discount or any other German retailer with Parcelforce?

I called parcel force and paid over the phone to speed thing up

Ah great that’s promising - do you happen to remember what number you used for them please?

hoping to give them a ring tomorrow see if I can get it paid to get them moving asap

it says I should get notified via letter – any idea how long this will take

2-3 days IME

Thanks Tom - I’ll keep an eye on the tracking and see if it updates and has a number on good news it’s only a few days away in the post (if we ever get any!)

It would be nice if bike discount would collect and prepay the UK fees for us, would shave time and courier fees for everyone meaning more sales for them. They already mark the code on the package so wouldn't be hard for them.

But they must not want the business....maybe object to concept of collecting UK fees for us. Plenty of other shops round the world do this.

ISTR that there is a cost involved in doing that.

i paid parcelforce online iirc. didnt wait for the letter.

i had to book  a day for delivery, and i was only in at weekends which  cost £12 extra