Model Railway Forum

hang on thread says International Shipping Costs


Just the usual thread drift. Chops reminiscing about when in Britain in the mid-sixties and how verdant it was and me pointing out how much had changed since. Wrist duly slapped.

Richard

Drat. Bill Bryson had a few choice remarks to make about some of Britain's lack of regard to its history. I guess you cannot save it all. Seeing WTD's landscape, one has the impression if you stick a spade in the ground you don't know if you will hit a Roman or Viking artifact.

Otherwise, yes, the polite answer is that I have indeed fallen off the deep end gushing how lovely Britain is/was.

El Paso, which was founded just after the Elizabethan era, was in a particularly mad dash to pave over its earliest history. Not much left that dates beyond 1920's, and truly breath taking eyesores of the 1970's that scald the senses. They could not wait to rip up the charming trolleys, which dated to 1880's in the form of a mule drawn tram, and then spent an amount that boggles the mind (44,000,000 USD, plus or minus a few 1,000,000) to lay down a small loop of rail from University to downtown, which has a ridership of half a dozen.

That was before the new regime. Perhaps we will see trolley service to Hawaii, yet.

Anyways, unrequited love's a bore. I will make note of inflated shipping costs from unscrupulous fish mongering scoundrels. It will take some back and forth to calculate BPS to the USD, which is expected to transition towards the value of the Mexican Peso, shortly. Won't that be special.

Be cautious and check customs rules - exporting from UK should incur no charges (as far as I know but could be wrong) but importing into the US might incur local and nation taxes and duties if the value is above the set limits (whatever they are!).

In short, check, check, verify and check again. It's no good spending $1000 here and getting home to find you have a $400 tax bill when individually you could have shipped them stateside for $100 !

Thank you, Ian.

IanS wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 4:52 pm Be cautious and check customs rules - exporting from UK should incur no charges (as far as I know but could be wrong) but importing into the US might incur local and nation taxes and duties if the value is above the set limits (whatever they are!).

In short, check, check, verify and check again. It's no good spending $1000 here and getting home to find you have a $400 tax bill when individually you could have shipped them stateside for $100 !

I think I have been making too much work out of all this. Perusing the Hornby UK website, it dawned on me that they offer free shipping on international orders over $75. Since Hornby, for the majority of it, suits me well enough then this is the answer. One vendor was charging about 40 BPS shipping on a single coach at 20 BPS. All that comes to 83 USD.

Chops wrote: ↑Fri May 07, 2021 1:05 pm I think I have been making too much work out of all this. Perusing the Hornby UK website, it dawned on me that they offer free shipping on international orders over $75. Since Hornby, for the majority of it, suits me well enough then this is the answer. One vendor was charging about 40 BPS shipping on a single coach at 20 BPS. All that comes to 83 USD.

Sorry to be pedantic, but to clarify that it isn't 'International orders' generally, it's orders to the US (just in case members from Australia, Cyprus etc stared having hopes of free shipping). Their website does offer free shipping to various parts of Europe on different model ranges such as the Electrogen and Jouef ranges. The places for 'free shipping' varies, so it's not universal.

Yes, clarification is important, Hornby's site does say free shipping to the US for orders more than $75 USD. I've got my eye on a few pieces.
Some people buy golf clubs, I buy model trains.

I did have to leave the fold to lay hands upon the coveted Rapido J70, however. Fortunately, that shipping wasn't bad and they appear to have
subtracted the VAT, which I was never quite sure if that applied to USA purchases, or just something used to bleed local denizens a whiter shade of pale.