exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Introducing our new customs form tool
Royal Mail now need all customs forms to be created electronically rather than paper forms. To help you with this, we’ve created a new tool that takes all the hard work out of creating your customs form. All you need to do is provide us with the reference or barcode that it creates.

I somehow doubt filling out four pages of information is taking out all the hard work of just simply writing it on a paper form with not much content on it in the first place :roll:

I can honestly understand the direction of digital information as opposed to paper. But this is actually going to create even more work. If it wasn't for my girlfriend doing this work then there would be simply no way I could do it myself, as again, I cannot do hardly any typing any more, as people know.

It is really getting onto the hassle of why I don't offer courier as a option because of the amount of paperwork it entails. It really does beg the question of how much more hassle I am willing to deal with sending parcels overseas these days. With things just generally getting more hard work and more expensive to ship overseas, at what point do you say enough is enough ?

It's bad enough with 90% of people who are ordering lately simply screw up their addresses. People are not even putting their name on stuff now, and that's needed to be able to post stuff overseas. Then it takes a lot of time to correct it all. As stated previously I started charging extra because of the work involved. And now there is even more work filling out digital CN22s. The whole thing is just getting ridiculous these days :(

I have still been using the CN22 when sending post to the EU and just let the Post office person fill the electronic part out when I do the payment, never had a problem or am I missing something bud ?

supaduper wrote: 26 Mar 2024 16:19 I have still been using the CN22 when sending post to the EU and just let the Post office person fill the electronic part out when I do the payment, never had a problem or am I missing something bud ?

We sent packages yesterday just fine, but the post office guy said today about it. But the guy is pretty on-the-ball with telling us stuff as we go in there often. So I assume others branches will soon follow.

Yeah it will be fine, just fill out the CN22 label as they will still be available but it will take a little longer at the post office counter as they will have to input the CN22 details electronically for you , so it now more of a time thing, I`d hate to work in a Post Office now it must be a nightmare

We went through this in Switzerland a year or two ago. The next step is that the post office charges you if you didn’t fill in the digital one first and the post office employee looks very annoyed too!

supaduper wrote: 26 Mar 2024 16:48 Yeah it will be fine, just fill out the CN22 label as they will still be available but it will take a little longer at the post office counter as they will have to input the CN22 details electronically for you , so it now more of a time thing,

I'm not so sure about that though..

I`d hate to work in a Post Office now it must be a nightmare

Yep, the post office guy gets annoyed repeatedly with people in there :lol: last time I went in I said "I bet you need a stiff drink at the end of each day"... He laughed and said "it helps" :lol: I couldn't deal with the general public like that. I would be strangling people after the first hour.

foft wrote: 26 Mar 2024 17:00 We went through this in Switzerland a year or two ago. The next step is that the post office charges you if you didn’t fill in the digital one first and the post office employee looks very annoyed too!

Interesting thanks, that could may well be how things go here.

I have already seen sellers refusing to ship either into or out of the so called European Union, citing complicated customs declarations. I don't blame them, such controls are not in the interests of businesses or customers.

Th CN22 form isn't bad when shipping outside of the UK. But it's confusing shipping to the UK as I think under £135 value the UK government expect the sellers to collect tax. So I don't blame them in not bothering now.

For companies like AliExpress it's good as it's quicker in not having to deal with tax and it's cheaper as I don't get charged for the invoice. Though over £135 goes back to the old system of paying tax later. And as I found , you have to keep well away from the £135 mark else you end up paying tax twice.

So for big businesses in some respects tax collection is good for the buyer. But as usual, nobody cares about the small sellers who just don't have the resources to deal with it all. For me it's a nightmare doing my tax return. I don't get involved ith vat as I don't want more paperwork. It's very time consuming and unpaid work. If I had to collect tax to export , I wouldn't bother and just not ship to those countries anymore.

IMHO worldwide should get rid of import export tax. I mean get charged 20% for buying stuff, then get charged 20% for income tax. Plus if I buy some parts from China and ship back some parts for assembly, that's paying tax 3 times on the same item, 4 times in total. So it's just more cost effective to not bother. Plus again all the paperwork.

So I went into post office just and seems you have to fill the information out online. Put the barcode or number on the box, AND still do the CN22. So basically what they used to type in at the post office, we doing that job now :roll: