Louis Motors

i bought something from them a few years ago and everything was fine,but that was before brexit.Are they saying they will pay the "other" charge that we now have to pay if buying in Europe as well as the VAT & carriage?

 

It's a German retailer. They have pretty descent stuff. I order from them quite often. Can't attest for the tax stuff of course.

 

the import duty can be a lot of money, iv'e stopped looking at european suppliers now as ive heard some horror stories re the charges

 

probaly a good idea just to buy in the UK at the moment,it's a shame as you were able to get bargains from europe but with the customs/import now it can work out more expensive

 

But just think of all the amazing advantages we gained in exchange for having to pay a lot more for products from the EU!

 

On the UK portal:


They probably have a UK legal entity, even if the stock comes from germany

 

It may work like the "Hong Kong"-based camera shops such e-Infinity and Panamoz. They ship a container over at their cost, sorting out all the import/VAT and such, and fulfill the orders from a UK warehouse.

 

I recently spent a large amount of money with them (1200 quid ) and can say the buying experience was very good, about same as ordering from UK. They are UK VAT registered and say they deal with the import duty, and I can say that appears to be true as the goods arrived in 3 days with no hassle.

I ended up returning the items and that was straight forward too, using prepaid return service and drop off at local post office. The only difference with UK returns was that there is also customs paperwork to print off.

However, one thing to be aware of is that whilst the web site shows prices in pounds sterling, your credit card is billed in Euros, which means your card company may also charge a separate foreign transaction fee (mine did, but I understand there are some which don't). Note, the £ amount on the credit card bill was what Louis said, so included the correct exchange rate, I just got this extra fee.

More importantly, refunds appear to be handled as crediting the Euro price you paid, which means that will also incur another charge from the card company, as well as loosing out on the exchange rate differences at the time and the buy/sell spread built into these things. All told I think that all cost me 80 quid (on that 1200 quid order).

I was ordering kit that wasn't available in the UK so considered it worth the risk, but probably wouldn't do it again for purchases where I thought I may want to return.

 

My experience is the items are sent direct using DHL with hand off to Parcelforce in the UK, with online tracking for both, and it takes two or three days.

 

Taking into account what @brown mouse was saying about potential credit card charges at both ends of a purchase/return deal, I opened a Starling bank account a while back. You can then have a Euro account, transfer between the two at a very competitive rate, and switch from Euro to Sterling on your debit card in app. Extremely useful tool if you conduct transactions frequently in Euros.