ever been bitten by something you bought on the Internet? I’m not talking about dodgy fake goods or something that didn’t live up to what you were expecting. no, there are laws to protect you from that. this scam is legal and it has caught me at least four times. It’s cost me nearly £500 so far and we have no protection from it.
I’m talking about tax, customs import duty and courier handling fees – from “UK” websites.
the EU con trick
Global websites have individual country domains (TLD’s) so customers can be confident that they’re buying from a supplier from their country of choice. Every country has its own domain. The only odd-ones-out being the US and the EU. The US has the vague .com and EU member nations can use their own national identity or the Union’s .EU domain. No other trading group has that.
Having two domains is unique to the EU.
But it seems the EU isn’t content with that. They want more. So here’s the con.
buying from your own virtual UK high street
Let’s say you couldn’t find an item in your home country so chose to buy from abroad. You’d expect the goods to attract customs, local taxes and courier handling fees you’d have to suck up by doing so. But when you buy from your own country site, None of those costs apply, right?
Well no. Not if the EU’s involved. But then, the EU don’t respect international trade, do they?
they take your money – and you have no choice
Many things were agreed when the UK’s population voted to take its place back in the world instead of selling globally with one hand tied behind our back inside the EU prison’s perimeter fence, looking out. It took years of frustrating negotiation, but a trade agreement was thrashed out. Yet one huge issue was lost in the EU’s sleight of hand. Given that the agreement was about trade, it was very strange that the UK agreed to something the EU were not prepared to reciprocate with.
the EU’s one-way Internet agreement
When the UK left the EU, they insisted we gave up any right to trade with a .EU domain name. And the EU carved out a huge statute outlining it. OK, we’d left, so seems fair, doesn’t it?
But what the EU sneaked through was not fair, not by any means and it was without any alignment or parity within any reasonable trade agreement.
The EU sneakily gave permission to its member states to use and trade under a .co.uk web domain, completely in English, priced in Pounds Sterling, yet secretly be nestled deep within the EU. With no VAT applied, making EU-made goods look like bargains due to this apparent 20% “discount”.
The unsuspecting non-EU buyer pays out thinking they’ve scored a bargain.
The shock in the post
Its only when your goods are shipped do you discover they’re from deep within the EU – from Germany, France, Belgium or some other EU country. When the goods arrive in the UK, they have the actual EU country of origin charges applied, so that means UK VAT, Customs Duty and a surcharge from the handling courier.
Suddenly, your “bargain” is nothing like as attractive. The perfect, official hustle.
the sting in the tail
But worse is to come. The EU defrauds every nation in the world that has a trade agreement with the UK and is expecting UK quality, regulation and fairness.
This is because global buyers suffer the same fate as UK buyers when they land on such non-UK sites. Instead of enjoying zero tariffs, tax breaks and lower prices their UK trade deal provides, they’re hit with EU regulation because these secret EU sites are nothing to do with the UK.
And its despicable.
All this costs non-EU buyers money that they simply could not have expected. Its the ugly hidden face of EU protectionism we thought we’d escaped. And it catches everyone outside of the EU in its net, without exception.
caveat emptor
So there you have it. Could there be a more classic case of buyer beware than this?