As a similar sort of related thread has appeared, I thought I would mention it
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7480
Basically I was just mentioning:
I also have concerns that Trump will likely add tariffs onto UK to USA shipping (***). Apparently 95% of trade with the UK is "services". So Trump does not really care about the impact on the 5% of businesses, again like myself.
Shipping to USA is already extremely expensive and tariffs on top is going to put people off buying from the UK even more. It's like 5% of businesses like myself cannot ship to the EU any more because of the rules and regulations... Nobody cares about the 5%... The problem is, 5% here 5% there, it all adds up into a rather large problem IMO.
As to what impact this will have on the store like mine, it is certainly not going to help matters.
People like me should be spending our time creating products and getting them in the hands of the customers, but most of my time the past two months has been going down a political rabbit hole of rules and regulations which I have basically near zero interest in.
I have enough battles in my life, in that every direction I try and go in, there is always some seemingly impossible barrier in trying get through ,which soaks up a lot of my time. Absolutely nobody, at least small sellers like me, can run a business under all these conditions.
Regulars here will know I've been wanting to take a step back and downsize to reduce my workload for the past few years now. I just wish it would have been on my own terms, as opposed to being forced out by ever increasing rules and regulations at every turn.
I have a monumental amount of work ahead of me in restructuring what I do and how much time I spend on projects and everything in general now. Like I said in another thread, this is the reason why donations / sponsorship is important. Thankfully our great community is sending enough funds to me, to at least "keep the system alive" . It's one monumental less thing I have to worry about.
This week's battle is Lloyds bank have stopped yet another payment to one of my UK suppliers. It keeps flagging up on my account and getting text messages that I need to ring their fraud team AGAIN.. Thankfully they have not yet shut down my bank account...yet.. So I'm just going to ignore the problem.
This came about because my UK parts broker was also having problems with Lloyds bank in stopping payments and shutting down their cards etc in the end they gave up and moved to a different bank .. So because it was a new payment from myself to a new bank, Lloyds have flagged it up as fraud even though it is the same company .. So how the heck am I supposed to pay the money to the broken now ?!
But I have had conversations with their fraud team before, they just want to convince you it is a scam by any means necessary and will not let you "move on" until you promise them you will not do it again... They just want to convince you that "THEY" are right, but I know fully well they are not, at least in my cases.
So how I am supposed to pay for my parts from my favourite UK supplier now ?! its pretty perplexing and near on impossible... It was a three-day ordeal last time I had my bank account suspended and I really don't want to go through it again.. I'm getting to the point where you start sending money through the post because there's not much else I can do, maybe a postal order at the post office.. The whole thing is ridiculous and just a huge time sink!
Like I say, absolutely everything in life seems to be a monumental battle which I should not be having to deal with.. I should be able to spend my own money wherever I like, I should not require permission from a third party... Nor should they have the right to stop me spending my own money.. But here we are..... My only real option to change bank, but I really don't have the time or patience for it

So now what ? Just sick and tired of dealing with BS like this every week. I really have much better things to be doing with my time.