Matrix Games Forums

UV order MTX54349

Re your post re charging buy Ups - I was also requested to pay Pds Stg 19.42 by UPS on arrival of game in UK - sent from USA Tuesday , delivered Thursday - no complaints over the delivery service - congratiulations on a brilliant game .
DavidR

just for the record - and to avoid a misunderstanding which already arose:

Chibs and Bits do not put 'gift' on the package.

They use ordinary mail for delivery. The ordinary mail services, which are gov't agencies in most european countires, do not cash in the extra taxes. So by using ordinary mail, like chips and bits do, it goes completely legal, and you do not have to pay anything extra, IN PRACTISE.

Originally posted by Griffin
Live in Hong Kong, ordered directly from MatrixGames, arrived in 3 days, counting from shipping date, and no extra fee other than expensive UPS cost.

Same case for me (my real name: Jonathan Kan, order#: MTX55078). And I think I'm the only customer from Hong Kong...

Ok, I might be the resaon for this being posted here, since I wrote an email to Erik on this subject a few days ago. Here's my case:

Delivery to Germany. I was charged an additional 17.03 Euros by UPS. The UPS delivery person told me this was about "charges by matrixgames not yet covered". (quoting from memory here).

However, the included paperwork breaks the additional charges down to:

00.97E customs
16.06E EUST

So, even if there's no additional UPS charge involved, someone would have to explain how they get to an additional charge of 16 Euros on a product that sells for $45, given that the EUST tax rate is 16% according to :
http://www.zoll-d.de/b0_zoll_und_steuer ... atzsteuer/


16 Euros is nowhere near 16% of $45.

xor

MTX54304

The calculation of EUST (import value added tax) is not only based on the cost of the goods, but also on the freight costs. So you have to add them to the price of the game and you get the amount which is liable to EUST. The customs fee should be roughly 1/4 of it, so perhaps UPS just made a mistake when showing both numbers. Usually, the final invoice arrives a few days or weeks later, may be both amounts will be a bit different.

Interesting. Do you happen to have a reference for this? Are you saying that customs should be an _additional_ 25% of the EUST amount?

That would make it:
$45 game +$25 shipping = $70 amount_to_be_taxed
~ roughly E76

16% of which for EUST would be E12.16
25% of which for customs would be E3.04

with a total of E15.20 to be paid to the eurobureaucracies.

That would still be quite a bit less than E17, but not enough to really bitch about. (Maybe enough to start a free trade initiative, though )


//----------------
Alright, just to follow up on this on my part. Received my official UPS documents today. All the additional charges involved were in fact covered by some claim made by some eurobureaucracy. So there's no reason to put any blame on UPS in my case.

Interesting though, to what varying degrees such charges are applied. I order things from amazon.com all the time, and I've never had to pay any add'l charges so far.

xor

I do not have the source info at hand, but import tax is ca. 4% on CDs (there is no import tax on diskettes, but I do not think that we will see a matrix game on diskette any more...).

Hong Kong - Same story...... fast delivery & no extra charges!!

#MTX53915

This applies to Canadians, but maybe also to others.

I just received Uncommon Valor today, without any additional charges than the cost of the game I was told on the phone (I forgot, but I think it was around $60 Canadian).

This is a lot better than the two previous games (Lost victories and Starships Unlimited), where I was charged $46 additional to the cost of the game and shipping for certain "brokerage fees". I later received an invoice from UPS breaking this down into about a half dozen items including tax, customs, handling, etc, but still...I can't say is the fault of UPS or of the Canadian government, but I was not happy.

The Canadian distributor gave me the price on the phone, which included delivery by mail. They received the game on Friday and shipped all pre-orders on that day, and I got the game today (Tuesday) at noon from the Canadian Postal service without any additional cost.

The lessor for this is that if you live outside the US (and especially if you live in Canada), it can be much cheaper to order the game from a distributor in your area. Kudos to Matrix for organizing this at least for Canada. Now I know where to order my next matrix games from.

henri

I'm in Calgary Canada and ordered directly from Matrix. They want a brokerage fee of $33.46 ! Makes this game cost me like $90 Can. Hope its worth it.

Since there are some people from Hong Kong here...

I just had to say that Chow Yun-Fat is one of the coolest guys
in the world.

Ordered two copies from Hong Kong. Placed order on Tuesday and received on Friday. No additional cost except the shipping cost of UPS (USD25). Order number MTX55349.

In germany the value of the programm is taxed and the costs UPS has to the time it FIRST reaches germany.

Example. UV cost 50 $, for simple maths this is 50 Euros.
UPS has delivery costs of 20 EUR, 15 until germany and 5 in germany.

This means 55 EUR are taxed with the 16% so you would have to pay 63,80 EUR for all, 8,8 EUR taxes.

You get a letter from the Zoll(german tax ) which UPS MUST give you. They also MUST give you something to see if they calculated their shipping costs right(for tax purposes). If they can´t give you thes two, you didn`t have to pay the taxes, as this is the evidence you really paid them and the government can tax them a second time, if you can`t show you paid the taxes.
As a private person you have to pay it, as a company you can get it back from the government after you have paid it.

Think this system doens`T differ much in other countries.

Greg

in german:
http://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/S ... steuer.htm

David Hatch UK

Yes! I paid a brokerage fee on both the shipments I received which made your games extremely expensive compared to other suppliers.


10/5/2002 MTX54386 UK Tax £8.54 UPS Brokerage £10.00

15/5/2002 MTX54385 UK Tax £8.93 UPS Brokerage £10.00 Duties? 0.49

As you can see the brokerage fee is far higer than the tax payable.

By comparison the UK Royal Mail collect tax payable without charging any fee for doing so.

UPS told me; - "Matrix should have pay 2.00$ more for air mail to Canada. That way, you (me) would have save 35.00$ in (­~¾$¼²¦¤£) brokerage".

I also wont to buy Korsum Pocket, Napoleon war, etc. NO WAY I pay a penny more for UPS. I remember Sid Meier's Antietam was the same mess and everybody was mad.

Hope you guys will do somethings about that

Matrix Games and UPS have reached an agreement. Customers will not be charge any more brokeage fees starting Monday.

UPS is also setting up a special system for our International orders that will have all duties and taxes included in the shipping price once when the order is replaced. This means that customers will not be charge any extra fees when the package arrives. We will let everyone know when this is also in place.

If you are ordering our games overseas PLEASE check out our dealers at http://www.matrixgames.com/insidemg/dealers.php

I stated this before but I feel I need to say it again. Credit Card banks will not allow us to take charges and ship items that do not include a shipping method with out full tracking.

Once again thank you for your support.

David

Thanks for the info, but this site http://www.store4war.com/ isn't any use unless you read French. Its list as suitable for French and England).

The do ship to England was more the point. Like we said there are a few choice and the best choice is to look them over and pick the one you like best.

David

Hi,

I've ordered UV the 5th of June and paid with credit card 49,99 USD + 28,95 USD.

Today I received a letter from UPS asking for an additional 76,14 € to deliver the game. What UPS is asking is close to what I paid for the game plus Shipping and Handling .

My order number is #MTX55534.

Matrix, could you please check into this? I don't mind paying for games, but I mind to pay so much for shipping a CD!

I'll wait for your reply before I pay anything to UPS.

Thanks,

JJJ