Royal Mail’s crown slips further

I’m well aware that I should have been hit for customs charges far more than twice over the past couple of years, but each time it happens I get really annoyed because there seems to be very little pattern or reason for when it happens. So yes, I am well aware that this is just me whining on about having to pay for clothes that I get for free (only on a technicality this time, since I bought them, but with affiliate points).

Neil found a note in the porch today from the postman saying that he couldn’t deliver my package (which I presume is from Threadless) because there’s a fee to pay on it AND because the package was too big to fit through the letterbox. But, he had to open the door and place that note on the settle in the porch because we don’t have a slot in the front door of the house, so he must have realised that we were in, and that the package wasn’t too big since I very much doubt that one hoodie and one tee are too big to fit through the door.

The fee annoys me as well. The cost of the items I bought, including shipping and handling, was about £28, and yet I’m being charged £11.95 customs fees. That, is ridiculous. The actual customs charge isn’t too bad, it’s the £8 handling fee that the Royal Mail impose that annoys me the most.

If you remove the $17 s+h fee that I paid to Threadless, my order cost pretty much £20, when you go over £18 in a business to consumer sale the customs charge is allowed to kick in. So that extra £2 has cost me £11.95, spending £2 more has cost me £3.95 in taxes and £8 on a handling fee.

Why isn’t the handling fee on a sliding scale? Would it still be £8 if I had a customs charge of about £500 on a big item?