UK shipping for US ecomm site

Us ecomm site Shipping to UK

[pxp25]

I have a ecomm website that is currently ship within 50 US states. I am ,however, notice that my site have many listing in the UK. and there are much traffic coming from jolly old England. Can anyone enlighten me with shipping and tax issue for accepting international order.

I currently take cc on my site that is in US fund using a US processor.

[JonR28]

Hello, I've been shipping to the UK since the begginning. Those englishmen love to buy my trendy widgets. Shipping costs are about $10 for up to 4Ibs. using USPS and packages arrive in 4-6 days. USPS does the trick rather well and if you are using a system like Endicia you can easily print out recipts and customs information.

[pxp25]

Thanks JonR28.

I am currently use USPS to mail my items. My quesetion what do I need to write on the custom form. Do you charge your UK customer pound or $ on your site?
I am looking forward to getting my items over the big water to our East.

Thanks

[Essex_boy]

Im in the UK - most brits are happy to buy in $USD - some ask for a currency calculator to see the price in Sterling. Dont price in Euros - pet hate of mine and many of my friends.

Warn customers about currency movements and that they might get charged a slightly diffrent figure to what they are expecting.

Complete the customs label truthfully, but warn buyers that they might have to pay VAT @17.5% plus any import duty.

If your shipping via the national US postal service the chances of getting the package opened/taxed are near nil.

Should you use one of the private label courier firms UPS, DHL etc you can lay money on the parcel getting charged/opened.

[Rugles]

>>>>most brits are happy to buy in $USD

It is funny but most Americans do not realize that there currency is universal. You can go to the most remote village, in the most remote county, in the most remote continent. And all the people there will no exacly what the US dollar is worth.
I am in Canada, most of our customers are American. Our website defaults to US currency, Canadians have to click to switch to Canadian dollars. Whenever we deal with a customer from a third country we always talk in US dollars. It makes everything easy, I can convert to my currency from US $. The customer does the same thing.

Another question was on duty/taxes for shipment to the UK. Be careful if you are shipping by courier (UPS/FedEx/whoever). If there are taxes due to the UK goverment, they will often charge the merchants courier account. It will be up to you to chase the customer. If you ship by a USPS (or Canada Post in my case) the Postal service in the UK will demand payment from the customer to cover duties and taxes when the goods are delivered.

[JonR28]

If you are using Endicia you can fill out the export form automatically and it will print it for you! Just get some stickey paper and you can stick it right on the package! I HIGHLY recommend endicia if you are shipping through USPS, you can even schedule USPS to do pickups!

I don't have a currency converter yet, we only have USD$ and it has not discouraged Canadian or UK buyers and we've never had a problem shipping to UK, Greece, Switzerland, Ireland, or Canada. Our only complaint ever has been from New Jersey :)

[pxp25]

This is truly a wonderful place to get informations about the internet. I have learned so much is so little time.

So far for my business I only use USPS online to print out lables. I also use their (USPS) shipping notification to notify my customers of their en-route packages. USPS offer the free notification with the priority mail service, so my customers get a sort of tracking for their packages. I look at Endicia.com it is very nice. Sometime down the road when the number of orders increase greatly on my site, I will likely consider the service like Endicia.com. Right now regular USPS does well for me. Since we are in the topic of shipping. Do you have good source for packaging (ie boxes). I use the free boxes from USPS but stuck with the limited sizing.

Well thanks again.