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I'm in the US is there a safe way for me to accept payment from someone in the UK?

PayPal credit cards are out I worried about chargeback scams. Money order or cashier's check? I guess I could hold the guitar for 21 days to make sure it's good...

Any thoughts?

Oh yeah. Shipping. Anyone done this? Whats the cost (CA to UK) What's the proceedure?

ThanxRCoates38603.8451041667

Hi Ron

Paypal is by far the simpliest, the other two ways are for them to send you a UK cheque in pounds sterling and arrange for your bank to clear it, they will charge a fee at your end for this, or for them to draw a USD cheque on their account and send to you they will be charged for this.

The other way is a Transfer from their bank to your, but this involves you giving them, your bank details.

On the freight as arough estimate you are looking at $200 to $300 from CA, but you can get a quote on USPS, Fedex site etc.


The other thing to be aware of is import duty and V.A.T, when you send you will have to declare the sale value of the instrument, when it arrives customs will take this value add the value of the freight and charge your customer the following.

17.5% VAT, on the Sales Value plus Freight.

0 to 3.5% Import Duty on the Sales Value plus Freight.

Hope this helps

Russell

I pay about $200 FEDEX to Europe. Its quite a bit, but its fast...

VAT... some customers ask you to state the value much lower than it is to save (say $500 for a $3000 guitar), but thats a huge risk as far as shipping insurance and such. Not really worth it.

_________________
Instagram: @jfrenchluthier
Web: https://www.jfrenchguitars.com/

I shipped to London using USPS. It cost me $125 from Georgia and it took 4 days to get there. I was impressed with that. I even put the guitar case inside a thin plywood case that I made that had foam rubber spacers to hold the guitar case secure. The plywood case was covered with cardboard because all shippers prefer to handle a cardboard carton. (don't ask me why) Anyway, all that to say that it was not light, weighing in at around 35 pounds.   The only catch is that the total length of the carton plus the total circumference of the widest part of the carton must not exceed 108 inches. That was tricky.
My next overseas shipping is going that way again.

John

[QUOTE=jfrench] I pay about $200 FEDEX to Europe. Its quite a bit, but its fast...

VAT... some customers ask you to state the value much lower than it is to save (say $500 for a $3000 guitar), but thats a huge risk as far as shipping insurance and such. Not really worth it.[/QUOTE]

Joshua, just send me your next guitar, put "GIFT" on the customs label and I won't have to pay the VAT or you!

Colin

PS John that goes for you too.Colin S38604.3712152778

_________________
I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Colin

The Gift classification only works up to a value of around ?20. After that it is still eligable for duty and VAT.

John

I use Stewmac sometimes and from me placing the order with them to the stuff arriving in Wales (which is a bit remote) can take as little as 2 Days, very impressive. I recently had some stuff shipped from John at Blues Creek and I think it weighed a total of 61 Pounds, and was only $200, via USPS and arrived in about 9 days, very good for the cost I thought.