I ordered photos from the UK - I recieved one lot (7kilos worth) then the photo books arrived a week later

Just got a letter from the customs (Douane) charging me 27 CHF for the pleasure of recieiving my photos.....is this right?

I paid £102 inc the photo books.

What is the maximum I am allowed to order without having to pay?

The icing on the cake is that a few day before receiving my photo books I recieved 9kilos of someone elses photos - I had to dispose of them and now I also have a bill from customs of 31CHF! lucky me!

I called the customs office and now I need to call the photo place and get a mail to say I have recieved the wrong photos so they will waver the bill - the photo place want me to scan the bill to them............all this work for some photos!

I will ask for some kind of compensation as its all quite time consuming!

Often the expensive bit is an administrative fee not just the taxes. Maybe next time you want to use one of these Swiss based services

www.bookfactory.ch
www.ifolor.ch
www.extrafilm.ch
www.fujifilm.ch
www.aldi-suisse-photos.ch
www.manor.ch

If I remember rightly, you are allowed the equivalent of 80 CHF of goods before they slip in the dreaded 10 CHF + 7.6% tax charges.

Sometimes, they don't look too hard though...

The admin for for normal post is 18CHF now.
Have a look at these threads:
Duty paid on items posted from outside CH
Holy s. what is this Zoll to pay when buying stuff from USA?!?!
Import tax on internet purchases

I dowloaded all the photos on the UK site when I was there thinking I would get it printed - turns out, I am not so efficient! to post it was free! Now I know I need to check in advance!

Thanks for the links