"I think if the "handling charge" part of it was more than the pound stated, I would write to Royal Mail and demand a refund!"
The Royal Mail handling charge for a parcel from overseas where VAT and/or customs/ import duty needs to be collected is £8. Not negotiable. But if this is the only charge and was added simply because they weren't able to deliver, there shouldn't be a charge at all. At this end, I doubt if they'd know if the postage was underpaid in AUS$, so it shouldn't be that. If you think the import duty etc is wrong then this can be challenged. DH recently got £90+ pounds back on a customs bill of about £120 because the sender had for some reason overvalued the items considerably on the customs form. Using a print off from the e-bay or Pay-pal pages he was able to prove what he'd actually paid for the item. Mind you, he did suspect that the refund was for too much but if that's what they said it should be, he wasn't going to argue. But the £8 handling fee is always the same. Out of interest, we recently received a large A4 envelope which had been stamped with a standard 1st class stamp and so there was a £1.17 charge for it (ie handling and excess postage), but because they hadn't put a card through the door to tell us about it, we didn't go to collect it! A month later it turned up through the letter box with the £1.17 crossed out. As I don't think they are allowed to destroy mail, and there was no return address, I guess there was nothing else they could do with it. Fortunately it wasn't urgent. For those out of the UK, we now have a higher priced, large letter stamp, for these big envelopes. So long as you aren't sending just one or two sheets of paper, it can work out cheaper as they no longer weigh them, but instead have a slit through which the envelope needs to pass. For lace content, classes have started this week and no, I'm not surprised that most students have done very little or none at all during the break. The excuses that they come up with are very ingenious and quite unecessary, but it has meant a very busy three days as they have all forgotten what they were doing. Little and often is the key. Jacquie in Lincolnshire - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachnemodera...@yahoo.com
