[Closed] Ordering from r2 bike

Interested in this thread as considering an order from TrekInn at the moment...

The theory, goods up to £135 are sold inclusive of UK Vat etc. They arrive at your door as if you had bought them from anywhere in the UK. no fees payable.

Above £135 they are sold ex vat, you then get a bill on delivery for Vat, duty and a "handling fee".

In practice....

What you don't want to do, ever, if pay German VAT. you might not get hit for UK vat on delivery, but you may find yourself paying twice.

So uk vat is 20%
Uk duty is 6% on bicycle parts.
Plus the handling fee of roughly £15

The part I’m looking for is a pike ultimate. Euro to gbp the fork is £550
So landed to my front door its going to cost me £708.
Cheapest I can find in the uk is £782.
£74 difference.
Would you have any issues regarding warranty as they were purchased overseas?

Or you could use biketart with 5% off for new customers, just register and you'll get the code emailed to you. Works out £742. Prob safer when (if) it comes to warranties!

Careful with the £135 limit as it’s the “intrinsic value” of the goods - ie before discounting. You might pay £100 for some wheels that rrp are £150 and you’d end up having to pay vat/duty/handling charge etc.

Have you got any decent local independent bike shops near by?

I asked for a price on some Lyrik Ultimates a couple of days ago from mine (D&D cycles in Barnham), telling them i was haggling for some on pinkbike and he beat the price. £699 for a lyrik ultimate in red, 29er, 42mm offset and the air spring changed to my required 140mm.

Deals are out there to be done, if your local shop isnt short sighted enough to be in the 'i dont need to discount stuff, its selling anyway due to covid' camp.

Getting hold of stock seems to be the problem.
I live on the salford/prestwich border. Dont know of any LBS around here (only moved here summer)

R2 seem to be one of the few places that hold stock of the more exotic German made parts too tune, schmolke, extradite etc. So interested also....

German VAT? Just bought a helmet from Germany. £125 inc local taxes. Hoping not to get stung for more.

I had to buy a Newman wheel from Bike-Discount (as there is no UK Disti. For some reason it didn't occur to me this might be a problem when I got the original set three years ago 😉 ), and I added a couple of XT transmission parts I couldn't find stock for in the UK.

Not sure if R2 is the same, but BD use DHL who hand off to PF in the UK. Seems to be a lottery in terms of if every parcel gets taxed. I paid 5% import, 20% VAT + £12 handling (and the original postage was more than pre-brexit as well). Ended up costing about the same as the UK for the Shimano parts.

I also bought parts from Mantel and Bikester under £135 and they shipped door to door UPS with no additional tax (as tax was added at source).

The theory, goods up to £135 are sold inclusive of UK Vat etc. They arrive at your door as if you had bought them from anywhere in the UK. no fees payable

good to know for tyres

Th UK aren't enforcing all their own rules just yet, so expect this to tighten up in time.

Bike-Discount still need a minimum order of £157.79 so you'll be paying import, handling and VAT extra.

Seems to be a lottery in terms of if every parcel gets taxed.

Bike discount have a strange customs form, it seems to be dispatch note on one side and customs on the other. I recently had a package from them with the dispatch note showing (not the customs form), so didn't get stung. They also labeled my package as commercial samples rather than sale of goods.....

not sure if this helps
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/jan/21/eu-website-purchases-the-import-charges-uk-customers-have-to-pay

Just ordered a stem and headset from R2 @ €132 so cirtainly less than the £135 required for vat on import and should have been charged UK vat by R2. I'm assuming they are either disregarding UK vat charges in sub 135 checkouts or are unaware.
We'll see what happens when it arrives in the UK.

I was looking yesterday at the Rockshox 35 RL gold forks. They have some for £285 (in 100mm flavour) I have a 140mm airspring. Nearest Uk price is £100 more. Obviously not if you add Duty, postage and handling charges.

Even with vat, charges and duty that should work out less than the uk price.

285+20% vat(£57)+duty(approx£14)+charges£18 so around £89 in fees. Even with a bit of vat on the shipping it's the same as UK. This is 'if' you get charged it.

Anyone received anything from R2 yet, did you get charged? Hovering over some Formula Curas, good price regardless but even better if they're as seemingly nonchalant as Bike Discount

@monkeyboyjc Have you got the stem yet? Any charges?

@lawman91 yep, no charges....

I've had several German parcels delivered in the last month. Only one charged so far is from Bike discount, who I won't be using again if I can avoid it.

Encouraging to hear, did you choose UPS or DHL for delivery?

It was on DHL - but my order was £3 below the £135 crossover for charging vat at the UK end (R2 should have added 20% at the checkout). If your ordering from R2 (in fact any European shop) and it's over £135, your risking import duties and vat charges which will be billed by parcel force.

The matching bars I ordered direct from 77designz also came in duty free, at least so far... As they came via UPS who have a system of delivering items and then charging duties at a later date.

Thanks for clearing that up, my lord it's a minefield! Do we know if the £135 is inclusive or exclusive of shipping cost?

Including, HMRC say it's 'consignments exceeding £135 in value' that includes your shipping charges.... So your basket should roughly be below €156 euro (including vat).

The bars I imported were €177 Inc shipping so stuff is still getting though, but it's a risk. The £150 handlebar could cost me another £55 or so in charges which makes an already expensive bar a very expensive bar.

Essentially if your not prepared to pay the vat/duty/charges don't import.

Update for anyone interested, received both parcels from R2 today with no charges from Parcel Force yet. I was about £4 over the £135 max though for each, anything under would be fine I think. They have good stock of a lot of kit and the price seems good too. Delivery took 6 days so not too bad. Overall, a bit of a stressful waiting game, but hopefully worth it!