Buying stuff at freestylephoto.biz?

buze · Post by **buze** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:13 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

They have a great range of products, but I've been wondering if I'm going to get hammered on delivery with customs (which I don't mind paying) and royal mail extortionate "handling charge"...

Any experience ?

Edit: Corrected the URL to http://www.freestylephoto.biz/

Brian P · Post by **Brian P** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:58 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Is this the right URL buze? Freestyle.biz is a web developer.

buze · Post by **buze** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:00 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Nope sorry, I edited and corrected the post...

http://www.freestylephoto.biz/

/me goes get another coffee

BarryWilkinson · Post by **BarryWilkinson** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:59 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Hello Buze,

I have purchased a reasonable amount from the US, but not from Freestyle for a few years. I found that if the total amount was >£30, I almost always have to pay VAT. Sometimes there is an additional customs charge related to particular items. There must be a tariff somewhere for this additional charge?
Then there are the 'handling' fee's. The Royal Mail and UPS are pretty good at collecting these!

The above said, with the current Dollar exchange rate, you can sometimes do very well. It needs some careful calculations and a little luck. I recently bought a new Nikkor Lens from B&H in New York. I saved £364 over a UK purchase after all the fee's and postage were totaled.

Barry

Apple · Post by **Apple** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:29 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

There's a list of the duty and tax stuff for common goods bought over the internet here

As usual, it's a head-scratching job as to how they work out some rates - look up MP3 players with / without radios compared to ordinary radios etc for an example

The page with a bit more info on is here

Happy reading,

Andrew

Brian P · Post by **Brian P** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:41 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

More info on duty rates here.

buze · Post by **buze** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 1:28 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

I managed to enroll a US friend to buy and relay the goodies. Here comes the 200 sheets of HP5 at bargain price

Post by **Joanna Carter** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 2:11 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

buze wrote:I managed to enroll a US friend to buy and relay the goodies. Here comes the 200 sheets of HP5 at bargain price

If you come to one of the workshops, Ilford give us great prices (about half-price) as well as other suppliers like Fuji film and Formatt filters; all that and no import duty

Post by **Charles Twist** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 7:30 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Speaking of which, what has happened to our sponsorship from Retrophotographic? Are they just ignoring us these days because we failed to buy a load of stuff from them at the Keswick workshop?
Charles

buze · Post by **buze** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 8:06 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Awww well I didn't know that. But well, 200 sheets for $120 is not bad, that should keep me stocked up on fast film for my portrait project (HP5+ @ 1600 = Yummy)

So the workshops are actualy sponsored that way ? I tought only tea rooms were involved