And my package of forwarded mail posted by my friend hasn’t arrived yet…
A trucker’s marmalade sandwiches appear to have been confiscated along with a pack of chicken pieces, on his arrival in Calais.
Well - here we go. Probably the last of my misc items ‘care packages’ from UK.
This is what I had to fill in for my order of a Parcel Force delivery booked via Interparcel. I boldly declared that everything was made on the ‘UK Mainland’. This can’t be true, tho’. The only item that was made in UK is the book. All the hardware and clothing will have been made in China/India/somewhere east of Suez. All under the category of ‘personal effects’.
The point I made about UK being a distribution hub is borne out by items on that list. The soldering iron was £3.85. The first equivalent to appear on eBay.fr that was not from UK or China was from Belgium and costs over £10.
The sockets similarly. There were none from France or any other EU country. All were from China or UK. Not to say that they can’t be sourced in FR - but the great bazaar that is eBay doesn’t feature any local vendor of hex sockets.
I wait with trepidation the Billy Doo I will get from Douanes with the cost of getting this stuff delivered.
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Can you please report back when it finally arrives with timings and costs etc. Thanks
End of car packages = booooo, no more malt loaf!
I know so sad, MIL usually fills a box a couple of times a year with tea, Vegimite, HP sauce etc.
I have been buying stuff from UK sellers on eBay and AMZ.uk for several years, shipped to my previous home in Spain. Usually it’s something that is either not available or is significantly more expensive for the same or equivalent item.
I then make up to the max shipping weight band with bits n pieces like marmalade, bacon, Cheddar …
I think that’s all over now.
Sadly, this package should have gone out in mid-Dec but my pal in UK ran out of ink for his printer. By the time he’d got round to ordering more and it arriving, so had Brexit - The Finale.
There seem to be very few things we can’t get here, or an equivalent at any rate, but they are not easy to find. I am waiting to see if our Lidl has a Greek week soon as I can’t even get anyone to bring halloumi with them legally, never mind post it!
It’s now 11 days since my friend posted the package with my UK mail in it. I wonder when (if) it will arrive. Her Christmas card took 3 weeks and even then it had been opened - presumably by customs somewhere
Maybe the parcels are here. A piece by Dr North - a Brexiter who years ago proposed an EEA solution. He knows more than most about the detail. https://www.turbulenttimes.co.uk/news/brexit/brexit-parcels-of-grief/
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Paddington Bear drives lorry now, how times have changed.
I can see the headline already 
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Every Brit in the EU should be sent this article. So should every UK MP get one.
Now I know what the 20% addition to the bottom line, the “import fees deposit” of the item in my AMZ.uk basket is. And that’s AMZ’s calc. [1] The real figure comes out of a database at the import point. Vanishingly unlikely to be less. Probably more - maybe much more, depending on the item.
[2] AMZ.uk and their seller just lost a sale. A drop in the ocean but there will be tens of thousands more like this
Another useful piece … eBays ‘Intenational Seller’ terms. This explain the “No import charges payable” on some listings.
And AMZ.uk’s version.
Notes [1] the AMZ link negates that statement [2] AMZ and eBay are clearly making great efforts to preserve their sellers’ trade.
Amazingly, the “import fees deposit” is the most you will pay. If the charges turn out to be less, AMZ refunds the diff! Chapeau!
I’ve used eBay - UK and France - for 20 years. Two things: I may well not any more buy from UK. Ebay UK encourage sellers to use their ‘Global Shipping Programme’ which is nothing more than a giant rip-off, if they are offering their item worldwide. Sellers in UK parcel up and send their package to a UK ebay hub (Derby is one of them). The hubs are operated by Pitney Bowes. They undo the parcel, repack it (no trying to send more than one item!) then repack it in their packaging and off it goes abroad. With any excuse under the Sun to overcharge the buyer. My second point: when you said ebay.uk I thought maybe that was a separate outfit … but no, it opens to the usual ebay.co.uk . So that’ll save me a few keystrokes.
Does all this malarky apply to private sellers?
On EBay, as a private seller you can choose to use the Global Shipping Prog.
I don’t follow your point about overcharging the buyer. The bottom line, what you pay for the item and its delivery, is in plain sight at the checkout. It has been established and paid before P.Bowes gets their hands on it. One can cancel the purchase if one considers the charges unreasonable.
I did once have to wait about 6 weeks for a parcel to turn up which had been sent via the GSP. to Spain. The seller, a business, had sent the item to the hub. And there it sat for over a month.
I was wondering how a seller of a camera could justify a delivery charge of £49.95 while someone else was charging £29.95 for the same item. The difference, I now know, was one was all inclusive, the other was not.
At least with the GSP one knows what the total will be and has paid it. Without, as in the case of the £29.95 seller, it might come as a nasty shock of more than £20 when M. Le Douanier submits his billet doux.
Old Chinese saying, “It is better to know than not to know”
Why on earth are books included?
I have just ordered a book from Great Chefs of Britain and I am wondering what is going to happen to it.
It is published by them and not available on any other site.
You may well ask. I have a book, 2nd hand from the AMZ.uk Marketplace, in my package. According to the French postal rules, it will not be delivered. My AA Road Atlas was, as were two books on the D-Day landings, and a Michelin Green Guide to Normany - three different deliveries, - so I have high hopes.
When one fills in the form [which I copied above], one of the categories of articles in the list of customs product codes is ‘Books’. Logically, if you choose ‘book’ for an item in a package it should flag up “Article interdit”.
It’s altogether a dog’s breakfast.
It’s worse than that it is the dog’s breakfast regurgitated.
Are the Brits publishing seditious material or porn in the guise of cookbooks etc?
Ah, Jane! Those are on the banned list in their own right! As are materials likely to corrupt young people. So they’ve really covered the waterfront. Very efficient.
This is a perfect example of a department [P. O.] putting out a rule book to which another dept [Douanes] pays not one whit of attention. And, bearing in mind that your cookbook, a ping-pong set and a box of Monopoly are all ‘articles interdits’, is just as well.
I have no faith in the PO who prosecuted and sent to jail Postmasters who they said were committing fraud when they knew darned well that it was their own software to blame.
Then it might well be that sanity reigns at the Douanes, your book will make it past that point and the rest will lie in the hands of the delivery system, French PO or otherwise.
But it is a worry, important aspects of one’s life being in the hands of a postal service which has a reputation of less than first class service. I have a debit card coming from Spain and my S1 ‘application’ form from and return to St Lo CPAM via Newcastle.
I used to correspond with a g/f who lived in Port of Spain, Trinidad. The postal service in Trini is truly 3rd World. On one occasion 7 years’ worth of mail was found in a ravine in the hills, all dumped by one postie.
But I worked out how to send her cash. I sent it in an audio cassette case. I had a good win on a horse called ‘Mujahideen’ shortly after a 9 month spell working with them in Peshawar, Pakistan. I sent her £50 and she got it! I was amazed. So was she!
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I got this from the British Corner Shop.
Hi Colin,
Thank you for your email.
I am so sorry for the delays you are facing. We have been working around the clock to resolve these and have put a statement out to all our customers experiencing this issue.
There are many contributing factors as to what happened here (which I’ve detailed below) as appreciate that all you want to know is, where is your parcel. Unfortunately, due to the severity of the delays and daily changes to our courier’s services I cannot guarantee when your order will be picked up. As of 7th January 2021 all our couriers have suspended collections for the EU again. We were of the understanding that they would be collecting orders from 7th January 2021 but have had to pause collections to deal with their backlogs.
Timeline of issues:
21st December 2020 – the EU closed its borders to the UK and couriers refused to collect any parcels. We continued to dispatch parcels as we assumed this would be rectified and orders would be collected before Christmas.
23rd December 2020 – Our couriers partners advised they would not collect any orders until 7th Jan. Which meant we had pallets of orders sitting in our warehouse packed and ready to go.
29th December 2020 – The EU and UK Government agreed on a free trade deal for Brexit. While celebrating this deal, we knew that every parcel which was unable to be collected would now need to go through rigorous Brexit changes.
30th, 31st December 2020 – Our IT department, and system specialists push through many last-minute changes to help ease the Brexit transition which the goal of dispatching orders on the 4th Jan. This type of integration is usually done over 2 – 3 weeks and must go through serious testing. However, we did not have the time to do this as the border closures meant we had your orders and needed to get them shipped as soon as possible.
4th – 7th January 2021 – Our Technical Team are still working on resolving the issue.
7th January 2021 – Our courier partners have suspended collections to validate the data they have in their system for them to successfully resume their services. In addition to this they are seeing delays and congestion at UK ports and more rigid requirements for channel crossings.
8th January 2021 – Board members at British Corner Shop are working on a strategy to resolve an we will continue to update you. We have created a ‘LIVE service updates’ page so that the information is listed and clear going forward.
I hope this detailed response will give you a transparent view of the disruptions that COVID-19, the border closures, and Brexit have had on our service and how we are trying to resolve the issue as swiftly as possible.
Again, my sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused surrounding your order.
Kind regards
British Corner Shop