[Answered]Quick question for UK users

I didn't buy it this year, but shouldn't have had to since cakewalk charge VAT their end. In the past they ship from the UK or Ireland  (from near where my mum was born) unless they changed that.

if customs got it , they might assume there was some duty needed paying on it.

things getting sorted ?

 if they are wanting you to pay tax on it, show them the receipt should fix that? when I ship stuff on ebay, it's in the buyers hand if for some reason they wanna charge tax.. 

depends how it was declared also , as a gift / commercial product on the customs form.

@Fog and Twigman - That is what i thought, I never had this issue before and I have bought lots of cakewalk stuff over the years.
But now within a week I have had two shipments from boston, and both are being held for me to pay ekstra money, and all of a sudden I am being told from Cakewalk they do not take any VAT/Tax when we buy from them!?!
They tell me that there's no European Distribution either, I always thought that was one of the reasons we paid a bit extra for the products.
 
Any way thank you for the replies, I am beginning to think they don't like me;-)
 
EDIT: Got the answer from Ryan Munnis, they no longer ship physical items from Galway, so now we are subject to VAT and import duties when it arrives here.
So we are back to pay a lot more for the products, than the American Sonar users unless we download it. Bloody hard to download a keyboard.
 
Case closed.

Fog


just curious , how much do they want ? (haven't cakewalk already charged us tax on that automatically anyway ?!?!)

just shop at digital village or their UK distro et cetrea (or however it's spelt) .. which is what I will do next year.. as I'm overly tired of the marketing departments "antics" over the years (thats the polite version)

the recent one with the strings , being the final one... still, at least that way the UK economy gets a bit of the money in the process

@Fog - they charged me £15.91 which I did pay in the end, but I agree with you I am never buying any physical items from them again.
They do say on their shop that we might be liable for any VAT/Tax and/or any import duty, and they told me yesterday they do not charge VAT(which I thought they did as well).
Well Learned my lesson I guess.

Shame you didn't see the other thread and buy from http://www.etcetera.co.uk/

 I did and would recommend them to anyone in UK. Did I mention it was cheaper too?

Why buy Sonar X2 box from Et Cetera?
Costs less than the download
No 5+ hour internet connection crippling download time 
  UK telephone and email support 
  Printed user guide Product DVDs make reinstallation easy 
  Supports the UK economy 

SilverfoxUK


Shame you didn't see the other thread and buy from http://www.etcetera.co.uk/

I did and would recommend them to anyone in UK. Did I mention it was cheaper too?

Why buy Sonar X2 box from Et Cetera?
Costs less than the download
No 5+ hour internet connection crippling download time 
UK telephone and email support 
Printed user guide Product DVDs make reinstallation easy 
Supports the UK economy 

@Sam I can´t even remember why I stopped buying from EtCetera, I think it had something to do with stupid long waiting time on another product, which they never adviced me about before taking my money.
But I will do that in the future.
For further info the boxed disc set they wanted £22.89 for in VAT/Import duty on a £24.99 set of discs, they were returned to sender.
 

The amount of VAT is correct on his package... the VAT is due on the price of X2, of which the boxed set is merely one small piece.

US companies shipping overseas to the UK collect VAT and customs duty to the same degree UK companies shipping to me here collect CT sales tax.... they dont.

While i sympathise with the angst the OP had in this situation, I do not see any fault here of Cakewalk, as this is exactly the risk you run when you buy from overseas... getting something of value quickly through customs without an agent is a dice roll ... but to do it tax/duty free is a lottery pick....

which is why I already wondered if they are charging VAT, why ask for more..

I mean the import side of it's separate from that ? as I bought mackie stuff in the past and the prices after went stupidly high after.

box set is what £25. + another £15..  they are having a giraffe 

yes but when you are buying that £25 INCLUDES vat or should  .. which is why I don't get where they get this "extra" charge from.. when I buy from other makers .e.g. d16 or psp the tax is shown up as 20% in the order (they are EU based though).

if it's £30+ then yer I bother to get my money back IF they have messed up.. I did the same when the DVLA wanted to charge me another £16-20 for a new logbook.. I told em, prove they sent it ;-)


I expect the whole custom thing IF it's someone of say ebay etc. but not really from a company.

I wouldn't go too crazy with the math on this particular order because there was a mistake to begin with on our end and we acknowledged that with Telecaster/Mike. If you're using this situation as a basis of comparison to all others, it's not going to make any sense.

The import tax was based on bad math from an incorrect entry on the order on our part. We had to manually process the order due to Paypal issues which is what really caused the problem in the first place. So it wasn't a fault with the logic on the online store, it was human error. An unfortunate double whammy. The fact that there WAS an import tax is unavoidable, but the amount was wrong and we were trying to work with Mike to correct it. 

This is why it's much easier to work directly with people without getting others involved. No offense to you folks, you're all extremely helpful, but when it comes to crazy corner-case scenarios like this you most likely don't know the full details since you're all on the outside without access to the actual order details.

Long story short, the price on the order also included the upgrade cost from X1 to X2 since it was purchased at the same time as the boxes. The SKU that was used to process the order was for a physical upgrade and not a download upgrade like it should have been. This threw off the total cost of the actual physical product being shipped. So you're seeing an import tax of £22.89 for a total value of what I believe was more like £104.98 and not £24.99. (that's just an estimate on my end I don't have access to the order at the moment).

This, along with all of the other trouble Mike went through, is why we did our best to work with him, gave him a voucher/coupon to our store, and coughed up a portion of the cost on our end. We were offsetting our mistake in Mike's favor and also trying to give a little bit extra back as an apology. Honestly, it was a mistake made by entering a "C" and stead of an "E" on a SKU. A silly mistake, and one we wanted to set right with Mike. We were working on getting the tax amount adjusted as well but at the end of the day that turned out to be moot anyway because Mike refused the package. 

It sounds like everyone is happy (to some degree) that we've moved on from it. My point in posting on the topic again is that I wouldn't suggest getting any more headaches over the logistics on this case. It's an extremely poor example of how a normal transaction through the Cakewalk store would and should go for someone overseas paying VAT and import tax etc. 

Every business and every human makes mistakes. To me, I think it's important that the company and/or people involved work to try correct the mistakes when they do happen. Mike once again, I'm sorry for all of the trouble.

http://imageshack.us/phot...mages/688/cwstore.jpg/ Store states VAT inclusive so no VAT should be levied at point of import. Unless of course Cakewalk are not accounting for VAT in which case they are overcharging us and misleading us.

Twigman


http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/688/cwstore.jpg/ Store states VAT inclusive so no VAT should be levied at point of import. Unless of course Cakewalk are not accounting for VAT in which case they are overcharging us and misleading us.

It's confusing, but it's a different VAT would you believe, and not within Cakewalk's control.
You can be charged VAT on the duty and any clearance charges.  Yes, charging 20% VAT on Duty is double bubble in my mind. but that's what the buggers do.  For example, here's the breakdown of what I was charged for the antique print I mentioned above:
Duty £56.79
Parcelfarce 'Clearance Fee' £13.50 (flat rate)
VAT £14.06 (i.e. 20% of the two sums above)
Total £84.35.   

@ Ryan - Not a problem I have moved on and I fully agree you all did what you could to help out, so in the end we got there minus the boxed disc set, but I can live without it
 

thats an interesting link.. so why don't cakewalk value + ship the box value at £25.. as really it's an "extra" and that's what it cost *NOT the upgrade cost*... we can access to download seperatly.. then it wouldn't attract such taxes right ? 

It's just funny, since roland has a UK base here.. can't they just deal with shipping it  / getting them made here.   

I guess they need to hire starbucks  / ebay / paypals / facebooks etc accountants ;-)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19967397

I guess lets make it all easy and buy from UK shops :)

When I was in the UK, I once purchased a graphics card from the US and had to pay £24 import duty.  However, whenever I purchased any software items ordered directly from the Cakewalk site, these always arrived within 2 or 3 days, despatched from somewhere in the UK.  Nothing to pay.

I have had this problem, but I did not end up paying VAT twice. Cakewalk eventually helped sort it out.

See:-

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?high=&m=2498033&mpage=1#2498150