Play.com and VAT?

Kintarō Hattori

Hey Folks,

I'm just wondering, do Play charge vat on purchases to Ireland? I'm not trying to get out of paying vat- I am just curious. I remember reading how the UK were going to change some law in regards to the Channel Islands as this allowed Play to sell to the UK without Vat. I think it was called 'Low Consignment Value'.

So do they charge Vat to Ireland and if so, what rate do they charge?

jor el

Play don't charge VAT, so if your order is above €22 you may have to pay it on delivery.

wextipp

Just got caught on that today. Had to pay the VAT of 11 euro plus a post office clearing charge of 6 euro. Stupidly I had ordered several items on the one order and each individual item was below 22 Euro. I should put each item on a seperate order as they don't charge delivery.

rocksolid

well guys, heres the interesting thing, a while back i ordered 4 or 5 blurays from play.com, all individual orders on the same day just to avoid customs here....

a week or 2 later they all came in the 1 box (luckily enough they avoided customs, dnt know how though as the box was marked at £90). Anyways i contacted play wanting to know why they all came in one box when i specifically ordered them all separately so as they would arrive to me separately, I was told "to ensure seperate delivery they must be ordered on seperate days as well"

Obviously play try to save on postage costs by bulking orders together....

Nody

And strictly speaking it does not stop customs from charging VAT either; they can keep things in storage to total up what you've got coming in...

wextipp

NoelDoran wrote: »

to ensure seperate delivery they must be ordered on seperate days as well"

Think what I will try next time is set-up several delivery addresses, same actual addres but each one with a diffenent Zip code, WX01, WX02 etc and use a serperate delivery address for each order.

pleasant Co.

Nody wrote: »

And strictly speaking it does not stop customs from charging VAT either; they can keep things in storage to total up what you've got coming in...

Has this happened to you? my understanding is that it's the total cost of package including delivery, not the total cost of any amount of packages...it'd be well bizarre for them to hold any packages back on the off chance that more may arrive for the same person.

rubadub

pleasant Co. wrote: »

my understanding is that it's the total cost of package including delivery, not the total cost of any amount of packages.

I read that they can do this, they view multiple packages form the same place as a consignment or something. This might be to cover loopholes that couriers could use, e.g. if I had a courier company I could ask you to package all your stuff together and get my delivery man to unbox them as per your instructions and hand in 5 individual items at your door.

I presumed they would all have to arrive on the same day though and thought it would have to be the same invoice or something though.

Otherwise in theory you could legitimately order 5 items over 5 weeks from play and due to a volcano airmail problem they could all arrive the same day 7 weeks later. And then you unfairly get stung on the lot.

Nody wrote: »

they can keep things in storage to total up what you've got coming in...

Any info on this, like how long they could do it. There would obviously have to be some sort of time limit.

wextipp

wextipp wrote: »

Think what I will try next time is set-up several delivery addresses, same actual addres but each one with a diffenent Zip code, WX01, WX02 etc and use a serperate delivery address for each order.

Just tried this last week for several items. Ordered 4 items on the same day but each with a different delivery address. The only difference in the addresses were the dummy ZIP codes. All despatched in seperate packages.