I anticipated perhaps being obliged to pay CHF 11.50 for the 'we're in the bits of Europe that suit us" thievery import inspection whatever charge, but was pleasantly surprised to receive the package without further cost and 5 days ahead of the projected delivery date.
My German is woeful (despite the name), but I'll look at Amazon.de for much more in future.
With standard (Post) shipping, expect the 16 (Maybe 20) CHF "presentation" fixed fee + 8% VAT.
Thank you for posting an answer.
If Amazon ships a product to Switzerland directly, they declare it in a proper way so there is no random extra Swiss customs fee (at least I never heard otherwise).
As such it should usually go as follows:
99 € = German retail price (incl. German VAT)
99/1.19 = €83.19 = German retail price (without German VAT)
83.19*1.08 = €89.85 = "final price, including Swiss VAT"
There may be some further charges, such as shipping and a customs handling fee, but as mentioned before no ugly "surprise" fee by Swiss customs.
Obvisouly, if you use a CHF-denominated credit card, the bank will probably fleece you on the fx rate. I use and recommed dkb.de and currencyfair.com to avoid that, but that ́s another story.
Regards,
Christian
With the post, custom procedures are handled by the post and are billed directly to you (8% VAT + a processing fee, ~16/20 CHF can't remember the exact figure)
With DHL, Amazon charges you in advance just for the Swiss VAT.
With regards to the amount, sending with the post is hit and miss. I had CHF 150 packages with no import taxes, and 70 CHF packages which were processed.
My experience is that the currency conversion provided by amazon (charges in CHF) is usually more convenient than being charged in Euros (my bank charges 2 or 2.5% per transactions in foreign currencies.
Zwischensumme: EUR 108,40
Verpackung und Versand: EUR 19,77
Vorauszahlung der Importgebühr: EUR 10,51
Endbetrag: EUR 138,68
They are charging me for:
VAT: CHF 10.70
Account handling (??) 19.50 CHF
Cash advance fee: 3.00 CHF
The account handling fee appears to be a fixed processing fee they charge for every invoice they send.
Of course I am challenging it...
Although I do not particularly like getting screwed by the Post and their processing fees, at least with them I pay import taxes only once.
If you order books, this will mostly not happen: Duties are only collected if they exceed CHF 5.00. With 2.6% VAT applicable to books, you ́d have to order one very expensive book!
By the way: With the post, the free allowance is per package, not per day. So if you want to order a bunch of books which are above the free allowance when combined, just order them in separate orders, making sure they are shipped separetely!
I sent an email to DHL because they are obviously on holidays today. I will follow up with them on Tuesday and let you know.
IMHO challenging it will only make it MUCH more expensive for you. Please do let us know!
IMHO challenging it will only make it MUCH more expensive for you. Please do let us know how it turns out though!
To me, it's a simple misunderstanding between Amazon and DHL.
sorry - I didn ́t read properly. Of course, if VAT was already prepaid, then you should challenge it, and it shouldn ́t be a problem. Sorry for messing up the thread by not reading properly
Again - please let us know how this turns out!
Rgds, Christian
I am pushing papers between DHL and Amazon. Apparently they do so much business together that each doesn't have a bloody contact number for the other in cases like this one.
I think I'm at the end of the tunnel though, and I will have a full report complemented by funny anecdotes about the inefficiency of two big multinational corporations!