Hi all,

I need to order some books from www.play.com for my MBA as here th books I found are not in English.

The thing is, will I have to pay again postage charges when the books arrive here? A friend told me this.

If so, what can I do to avoid it? Its over 300€ book order so quite hefty I guess.

Someone suggested shipping to a third person living just cross the German-Swiss border to avoid having to pay this.

What should I do?

If I have to pay delivery costs once I have the books posted to me from the UK, does the costs they make me pay in Switzerland depend on weight or is it standard rate?

Play.com is free delivery but you will probably have to pay customs charges on a book at that price. Don't know how much that will be - sorry!

Thanks. Its actually about 6 books. I thought i would be made to pay customs. I just dont know whether it depends on the weight of the books or whether it is a standard rate

Custom charges for books I believe is about 30 or 40% less than for other goods. 300€ would probably set you back about 50chf nevertheless...

I ordered a $255 training kit from the US a month back, and my custom charges were about 48chf total (it was a bunch of CD's, not books, and one binder with a bunch of papers). About 20chf was due to a handling fee, and about 28chf was taxes.

Rough approximation. Had nothing to do with weight iirc. I also got a 150€ sword from France, and that too cost about 45chf. It weights considerably more than the CD's and binder, but overall cost was a little less and thus the price I mentioned. Again about 20chf handling fee and the rest was taxes.

Customs charges for books are at the reduced VAT (TVA) rate of 2.9%. BUT it only kicks in if the resulting charge would be greater than 5 chfs, which is approximately 200 chfs worth of books. It's nothing to do with weight.

The trouble is, it's not only the resulting TVA (which would be very small), it's that once your parcel is 'in the system', then you also have to pay additional admin and processing fees. The overall bill will then be about 40 chfs.

The easy way to avoid this is to do two orders, a couple of days apart. Shipping is free, so it doesn't matter, and they'll sail through customs then.

kodokan

PS: Goods other than books attract VAT at the normal rate of 7.6% - the 'only if it's going to be over 5chfs' rule still applies, but the higher percentage here means that goods over about 65chfs are caught in the net.