Shag aloha shirts!

Hi folks! It's been awhile since I've posted, please forgive me. Mainly it's a self-imposed hermitage due to the yahoo clubs switch over. If I have to read one more ad....

Anyway, I thought I would share this. For those of you who do not know, Switched On Gallery has very limited quantities of aloha shirts designed by Shag:

http://www.switchedongallery.com/pages/toes.html

I bought the blue ratongo to keep as a Christmas gift for my old man. Now if I can only keep it a secret until December!

Cheers!
Erin

Ooops, I guess I should have read a little farther and posted this in the Endless Shag Merchandise folder. :wink: Still getting used to this new forum, pardon me.

I don't mind the Shag merchandise, it's good to see something I like and enjoy become a little more accessable. I'm glad to see Shag become a little more successful. And those Aloha shirts are pretty damn cool...

Erin

Ouch!! Though broke as ever, I succumbed to greed and ordered one of these shirts for my other half, Not Particularly Tiki Lawrence. OK -- the price plus the postage to the UK was appalling in US terms but we're so used to being overcharged for everything over here that US$80 seemed OK... until the shirt turned up this morning, with an extra US$56 charge for import, excise, VAT and Parcelforce clearance.

Trader Woody, Tiki Chris -- did you get stung like this when you ordered your Sheckies? The cheery postman told me that mail from the US was notorious for getting charges like this whacked on by the bloodsucking leeches at our end. He also said that if the senders had lied and declared it as "documents" it would have been fine.

What I object to the most is that the Parcelforce charge of $20 is an administration charge -- for having to charge me the other monies! They needn't have bothered on my account...

AND the shirt, which looked a cool kind of petrol blue on the website, is a boring-as-hell grey.

BOOOOO!!!!!! Oh well -- my own stupidity, I suppose. Lawrence must NEVER KNOW how much it cost...

On 2002-04-21 19:34, bop-a-lena wrote:
Ooops, I guess I should have read a little farther and posted this in the Endless Shag Merchandise folder. :wink: Still getting used to this new forum, pardon me.

Don't worry about it, and welcome to the new forum!

I think a lot of people feel like if there's a folder for a topic, that's where you should post, but with these types of forums, "topics" are generally treated like the subject line of an email, so we will always have new topics posted.

In fact, for those who might not have noticed, the RED folders are topics that have stuff NEW since you last visited, and the newest-posted-to folders sort to the top automatically....

~Hanford

$56 extra on top of the $80 for the shirt?
Double-ouch!

I've always been aware of the potential for charges being chucked on top of packages from the US, so I try to avoid expensive items. Anything over $27 can have this unholy alliance of 2 tax charges plus the pathetic Parcelforce fee. Therefore, I make sure that virtually everything I buy from the US costs less than $27.

The Shecky mugs only cost $18 each, and I had each of my two delivered individually to avoid taxes. It actually ends up costing a lot less than having them sent in one package.

I've also been fairly lucky with the few packages costing over $27, as most of these have been prints rolled up in a tube. I guess they look like they are probably documents and just fly through customs unmolested. Also, anything marked as a gift should also be free from tax (I think!).

Hope that's a help!!

Trader Woody

That's a big help, Trader Woody -- thank you very much. I'll be more careful next time. Arrgghh!

I know all about those nasty 'duty' charges, being from a exotic foreign country and all. What I do, when I sent stuff to the US, I label it as a 'gift' on the little customs sticker they make you put on the package. Also helpful is to write 'Made In USA' (if its going to the US) so you dont get dinged. Perhaps similar rules apply - you could ask your US shippers to say 'GIFT, MADE IN UK' and that might help.

Just a couple of other points regarding getting stuff sent from the
States. It's worth mentioning to the people sending the package that
they should state the correct paid amount if it's lower than $27 as on a couple
of occasions people have actually inflated the price they put on the customs form drastically.
I don't know if that's so I think I'm getting a bargain or something, but it's not at all
helpful! Conversely, if they state that it has no value when it obviously does,
the package may well get opened and customs can then make up their own value,
which is inevitably high. So, stick to the actual price if it's at a value that's not
subject to import tax & VAT.

I also keep prices down by having stuff sent surface rate instead of airmail.
It can take a while, but I've yet to lose anything in the post that way, and stories
of packages being full of sea water or being flattened into a pancake shape are
grossly exaggerated. Half the time these packages end up going by air anyway!
By having them sent surface, my Shecky's cost pretty much the same as they do
in the US.

Trader Woody

Bop-a-lena:

Please check your Tiki Central Private Messages. you can do that by logging in to Tiki Central with your name and password then clicking on the Private Messages button in the upper right... There will be a flashing icon there!

Thanks!

Hanford

As I am now sending more and more stuff out of the country I have learned the many things to do to avoid these duty fees.
As you all had said before label it as gift. The only reason I insure my foreign orders is just so I can track them, I have had a couple get lost. So I dont always delare the package as it full value, in hopes that the heavy duty fees are not added. In some cases I will make a bogus invoice and include that in the package to confirm the prices.
The newest one I just found out recently was to not list the tiki mugs as "mugs" and just as "ceramics". If they have time they will actually test the mugs for lead and charge the customer the fee to test it.
I got a chuckle out of that one.

-stuckie