Community Stories

Half a year in - How is BREXIT affecting you?

JohnWoo
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I have hopes that common sense will prevail with the politicians in all countries.
Any issues with 'our' little corner of commerce must also be happening elsewhere in other markets, many which will be far higher in value terms. It is therefor logical to expect the pressure they place through lobbying onto the politicians will have an effect, and any benefits will cascade downwards to the benefit of all.
It will take time.
My Glass is Half Full!
 
Lucasssssss
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Based in the UK, sold a couple of watches since Brexit, and not noticed anything particularly with price/location of buyers, although anecdotally I seem to have seen slightly higher prices across the board in vintage watches at local auction, but not sure if Brexit/lockdown/market moving up.

On another note, I sell a fair amount of vinyl on Discogs and have seen a large spike in UK demand since Brexit, and a significant reduction in the amount of parcels I am selling abroad.

Otherwise, no real change (or at least, not yet).
 
Just Livin
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Am also based in the UK. Personally not seeing any difference.
BUT I have a couple of friends who run small businesses which import from India and Singapore. For them there is a massive impact to the price of importing containers from the region for their goods. Container prices in the region of doubled/tripled what it was before Brexit.
 
gatorcpa
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ChrisN ChrisN
Buying used from EU now incurs VAT so better to look to USA which always had VAT and prices are cheaper.
Thanks for the shout out to the good ole US of A!

Fact is that we have never had VAT. There is no direct federal tax on consumption, only state level taxes. No seller should be charging you state sales tax as you are outside the USA. This includes eBay.

Unlike most of the rest of the world, prices here are stated without sales tax, which is only added on when it applies.
gatorcpa
 
JwRosenthal
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gatorcpa gatorcpa
Thanks for the shout out to the good ole US of A!

Fact is that we have never had VAT. There is no direct federal tax on consumption, only state level taxes. No seller should be charging you state sales tax as you are outside the USA. This includes eBay.

Unlike most of the rest of the world, prices here are stated without sales tax, which is only added on when it applies.
gatorcpa
We are pretty lucky in the US. My state is only 6% for sales tax so it’s not that painful. Yet still people bitch about it. 🤨
 
khanmu
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For watches, for me, in the immediate term on the sales side it has meant focusing on sales to U.K. buyers or to buyers in countries who already had import costs in place, rather than folks in the EU, for whom I suspect extra U.K. related costs and delays may have come as a shock

On my buying side, as others have said, I now look at a wider range of markets as I’m now paying circa 20% on anything I import from anywhere, and the US and other countries were cheaper to start with. Also, perhaps it’s just me, but I have noticed a drop in the quality and quantity of what is on offer from U.K. sellers on eg UK eBay.

The biggest impact for me however has been Covid - I used to travel to the US, EU, Asia and ME quite regularly for work, and somehow always found something to buy and bring back… can’t wait for those days to come back!

There is a similar impact on other areas, such as the antiques trade. Other than that, I haven’t noticed a material impact, e.g food prices rising. I suspect a lot of the Brexit impact has been hidden by Covid effects, eg new visa, driving, medical insurance requirements for travel, inevitable queueing etc not being noticed as no one is travelling.

There is now a limit on how much wine I can bring back from France for personal consumption before taxes are due, but as I can’t travel that’s moot. It will definitely be annoying when I can though…
Edited:
 
cineaste
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SmithSJ SmithSJ
Similar to others in the EU I in Ireland have had to cut back on UK purchases. And that applies to everything on eBay, watch purchases and many other sources where we would always have looked to the UK first.

Customs opened a package for one watch I bought to check the value.

certainly building more links with collectors in Europe and switched to Amazon.de

Get someone in Northern Ireland to reship stuff to you! 😜

The only solace is if someone buys an expensive watch, they could easily fly to the UK to pick it up themselves, unlike the USA! I used to buy many arthouse blu-rays from the UK and now i have considerably scaled down my purchases. Not only some shops do not remove VAT, but also shipping costs have increased considerably.
 
Rochete
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gatorcpa gatorcpa
Thanks for the shout out to the good ole US of A!

Fact is that we have never had VAT. There is no direct federal tax on consumption, only state level taxes. No seller should be charging you state sales tax as you are outside the USA. This includes eBay.

Unlike most of the rest of the world, prices here are stated without sales tax, which is only added on when it applies.
gatorcpa

I think ChrisN means by "US always had VAT" that we in Europe always had to pay VAT (European) when importing from there, regardless of the existence or not of VAT in origin.
 
Dries
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I used to buy a lot of car parts in the uk for my MG. Since they are usually new, I only pay vat once, but the customs handling fees detract me from buying individual, smaller parts when I need them.

in watches I just stay away now, or at least until travel resumes.

I also tend to occasionaly buy art at various uk auctions, and that’s less problelatic as vat should be lower around 6%
 
ConElPueblo
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I am happy to hear that most are relatively unscathed by the break-up 😀

I ordered a poster from the Uk online last week, not looking forward to getting it processed by customs... A friend of mine had a very poor experience with a watch he had sent for service in the UK where the authorities wanted all sorts of unreasonable documentation. This was over New Years, so a bit of bad planning there. I myself got a batch of restored stuff back from James Hyman over New Years as well and got lucky, just had to pay fees for the billed cost.
 
YYTIN
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2 lately impacts from my side :

I was hesitating in getting some hands (could have been the dial too but finally found a NOS one) relumed in the UK by the famous alchemistrelumer that everybody advised me here. He is a very nice guy and I wanted to give it a go. But when I checked what was to be done (administratively not only the extra cost) to send pieces for a service and get them back... I kind of drop it... at least for the moment.

Another experience on eBay : I bought a book (From Seamaster to Seamaster) but I've had to pay extra customs on which I honestly do not really know what is real tax, import or extra costs added by others. That's fine but all in all I guess I will really limit my own web purchase from the UK.

Personnally I feel really sad about the Brexit. Hopefully we will be able to travel again pretty soon and I'll be able to visit my sister and my nephews pretty soon over there, as well as travel around this country I love.
 
khanmu
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YYTIN YYTIN
2 lately impacts from my side :

I was hesitating in getting some hands (could have been the dial too but finally found a NOS one) relumed in the UK by the famous alchemistrelumer that everybody advised me here. He is a very nice guy and I wanted to give it a go. But when I checked what was to be done (administratively not only the extra cost) to send pieces for a service and get them back... I kind of drop it... at least for the moment.

Another experience on eBay : I bought a book (From Seamaster to Seamaster) but I've had to pay extra customs on which I honestly do not really know what is real tax, import or extra costs added by others. That's fine but all in all I guess I will really limit my own web purchase from the UK.

Personnally I feel really sad about the Brexit. Hopefully we will be able to travel again pretty soon and I'll be able to visit my sister and my nephews pretty soon over there, as well as travel around this country I love.


That's interesting to hear about your book purchase - I think that is specific local country law coming into play when importing from a now non EU into EU country. Books in the UK have never had VAT added to them, so we can still buy and import books without any added costs (customs delays are another thing...), of course when we were in the EU , we could send them to EU countries without any charges at the sellers end.
 
DomB
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Based in the UK. I used to buy regularly vintage watches from France, Spain & Italy. Between the 20% vat now automatically added by EBay, the cost of shipping and issues with returns, this is not worth it anymore and I now look only at UK and US sellers. Shipping costs from the US is often not more expensive than from Europe, the 20% added is the same and this makes the US market (particularly for pocket watches) suddenly more appealing.
From a seller point of view, most of my eBay sales this year have been to UK buyers. Final values were generally lower than expected (specially American pocket watches) and I guess the lack of international bidders on UK auctions is affecting the prices downwards. So time to buy rather than sell…
 
SpeedyPhill
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Because of the need for an international passport (Euro 70.00 per person valid for 5 years) lots of people will renounce their yearly Christmas shopping trip to London, with Amsterdam, Paris & Berlin becoming alternatives...
 
JohnWoo
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SpeedyPhill SpeedyPhill
Because of the need for an international passport (Euro 70.00 per person valid for 5 years) lots of people will renounce their yearly Christmas shopping trip to London, with Amsterdam, Paris & Berlin becoming alternatives...
Not sure I agree with your assumption.
Euro 70 over 5years is not very expensive.
It will be interesting though.
 
Evitzee
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Takes time for markets to settle down and adjust to a new regime, people and processes will eventually sort themselves out.

Fortunately, being in the US we don't have too many issues re. Customs, most stuff just passes on through with no delay where the UK is pretty diligent collecting duty. I just received an item yesterday from Adam Lewis, went from Perth --> Germany --> UK --> Miami --> San Antonio and then delivered to me in 6 1/2 days total elapsed time, it spent <12 hours transiting Customs process in Miami and most of that time was waiting for the onward flight. I do believe the duty collected in these schemes probably doesn't pay for all the paperwork and manpower expended but continues because 'that's the way we've always done it'.
 
STANDY
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Have found shipping from the UK to Aus has gone up a lot since Brexit. Small parcels and small amount but have had some shipping prices double the product.

US used to be shocking years ago and now it’s not that bad. (with the occasional dumbass $73US shipping for a $200US product weighing under 200g )
 
JohnWoo
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STANDY STANDY
Have found shipping from the UK to Aus has gone up a lot since Brexit. Small parcels and small amount but have had some shipping prices double the product.

US used to be shocking years ago and now it’s not that bad. (with the occasional dumbass $73US shipping for a $200US product weighing under 200g )
The UK and Australia confirmed a trade deal Today.
If I understand the deal correctly, many negatives from dealing from one to another will be minor.
We will need to 'shop around' for the best shipping costs.
 
P
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No more cheap bike equipment.. For some reason, vintage bicycling and gear are popular in UK and not so much in Europe, so all the vintage Raleigh and other things like two-finger brake levers are not really available at reasonable prices now xD

Also, used to order books from Amazon UK - not anymore either..

So overall, not so much but just for the small but stuff 😀
 
fibonacci
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I live in the UK and recently bought something from Poland that was advertised as "VAT included". After shipment I saw that UPS was charging me an import fee. I asked the seller about this and they said that the price included Polish VAT but I still had to pay UK import taxes. My thought here is that I shouldn't have been subject to Polish/EU VAT in the first place since I'm not in the EU, and therefore the listing was misleading. Am I in the wrong or misunderstanding?
 
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