UK Shipping
FREE UK SHIPPING ON ALL ORDERS OF £20 OR MORE!
We send most orders via Royal Mail. Larger and bulkier orders will go via courier.
We aim to despatch your order within one working day. Royal Mail aims to deliver to UK addresses within three days.
UK orders with a total value of £20 or more are eligible for free shipping. Be sure to select this option when you check out.
UK orders with a total value of less than £20 are charged a flat rate of £3.00 for shipping.
Western European Shipping
Shipping to most western European countries, plus Scandinavia, Finland, Greece, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Austria and Hungary is charged at a flat rate of £15 per order.
We send orders via courier or Royal Mail International Tracked.
We aim to despatch your order within one working day. Estimated delivery time to most of western Europe should be 3-5 days after despatch plus any extra time needed for customs clearance.
You are responsible for any import duty, VAT and similar taxes charged in your country.
EU customers: see the notes on ‘VAT changes for EU customers’ and ‘Import Duty changes for EU customers’ below.
Eastern European Shipping
Shipping to most eastern European countries (except those included under ‘Western European Shipping’ above), plus Turkey, is charged at a flat rate of £30 per order.
We send orders via courier or Royal Mail International Tracked.
We aim to despatch your order within one working day. Estimated delivery time to most of eastern Europe should be up to 8 days plus any extra time needed for customs clearance.
You are responsible for any import duty, VAT and similar taxes charged in your country.
Shipping to the United States of America, Canada, Singapore and South Africa
Shipping to the United States of America, Canada, Singapore and South Africa is charged at a flat rate of £30 per order.
We send orders via courier or Royal Mail International Tracked.
We aim to despatch your order within one working day. Estimated delivery time to North America should be up to nine days from despatch plus any extra time needed for customs clearance, but in practice may be less.
You are responsible for any import duty and similar taxes charged in your country.
Shipping to the Rest of the World
Shipping to all other countries is charged at a flat rate of £40 per order, regardless of destination, value, weight or the number of items in the order.
We send all orders via courier or Royal Mail International Tracked.
We aim to despatch your order within one working day. Estimated delivery time to Australia should be up to ten days from despatch plus any extra time needed for customs clearance, but in practice may be less.
You are responsible for any import duty and similar taxes charged in your country.
VAT Changes for EU Customers
On the 1st January 2020, we in the UK completed our departure from the European Union and its Single Market, and this does have some implications for our many customers in the EU.
The most important is that EU customers now pay VAT to their own government at their own country’s rates when they import something. Previously, EU customers paid VAT to the British government at UK rates when they checked out of the Shop. Most of what we sell in the Shop is books (just because they are books for use in games doesn’t mean they don’t count as books for tax purposes). In the UK, the VAT rate on books is 0%. However, most EU countries charge VAT on books at some non-zero rate. I think the highest rate is 25% in Denmark, although it’s generally quite a bit less in most countries.
So unfortunately, if you’re in say Sweden (VAT rate on books 6%), and you buy £100 of RPG books from us, the Swedish government will charge you £6 of VAT (or the equivalent in Swedish Krona) when you import those books. Most probably the courier firm that handles your parcel will pay this for you when the parcel arrives, but will then charge it to you along with a small fixed administration fee. This clearly adds cost to you and quite possibly a (hopefully short) delay.
What should happen is that we, The Shop on the Borderlands, register for VAT in the EU, and charge you the appropriate rate of VAT when you check it out, just as we would do to a UK customer. The VAT would thus already have been paid by the time your parcel arrives in your country and (in theory) would breeze through customs. Unfortunately, the EU is late rolling out its new IOSS (‘Import One-Stop Shop’) system that would have handled this. It should have been live by 1st January, but it now won’t go live until 1st July 2021. Without the IOSS, the only thing we could do to be able to charge VAT at the point of sale is to register for VAT in each individual EU country. While registering for VAT in the UK is pretty painless, in many EU countries it is mandatory to hire a local consultancy firm to do it for you, and for that consultancy firm to agree to take on joint liability for any mistakes, which makes it expensive. That’s not realistic for a small business like The Shop on the Borderlands, so the only option while we wait for IOSS is to put the responsibility for paying EU VAT on to you, our EU customers.
I should point out that not everything we sell has a UK 0% VAT rate. Board games, miniatures and most other stuff that isn’t books attract the standard UK VAT rate, which is currently 20%. The price you see on our website for these items includes the 20% VAT but if you’re a customer from another country (whether EU or non-EU), you won’t actually be charged that 20% VAT when you check out. For example, if you’re in Canada and you buy board games, dice and miniatures shown on the website with a combined price of £120, you’ll actually only pay £100 plus shipping when you check out. You will then be responsible for paying any import taxes when the goods arrive in Canada, according to Canadian law.
If you’re in Germany and you buy the same £120 of board games, dice and miniatures, we will now also only charge you £100 plus shipping, and you will pay VAT in Germany when the goods arrive. When the IOSS becomes active on 1st July, you will still see the goods priced on our website as £120, but we will charge you whatever the German VAT would be instead of the UK rate of 20%.
Import Duty Changes for EU Customers
The UK and the EU signed a Free Trade Agreement which means that you will not pay any tariffs on goods manufactured in the UK when you buy them from The Shop on the Borderlands. Of course, not everything we sell was made in the UK – much of it was made in the US for example – and the relevant country for assessing Import Duty is not the retailer’s country – it’s the country of origin of the goods being sold. Thankfully, most of the stuff that we sell will also attract 0% import duties in the EU, so you are unlikely to see much in the way of changes on most products that you buy from us. We show the value of the goods, the country of origin and the tariff code on a label when we pack our parcels. We’ve always done this for non-EU foreign customers, but now EU customers will see this too. Expect to see a second label on the parcel next to the address label. This is the CN22 Customs Declaration.
