Brexit an interesting new "problem"

[Allan Carr]

The craziest one I saw was an immogration officer at LA who tore into a Swedish diplomat travelling on a Diplomatic Passport, demanding to know exactly what he was going to be doing in the US or he wasn't going to let him in! The guy was on the staff of the Swedish Embassy in Washington.

We have had some very pleasant US officials on our trips to the US but they have been outnumbered by the rude or non-communicative ones. LA is escpecially bad.

[jamesp]

Allan, you have fallen foul of TSA, French Immigration and the British Police over the years; are you really that unlucky?

[Allan Carr]

Allan, you have fallen foul of TSA, French Immigration and the British Police over the years; are you really that unlucky?

I have done one hell of a lot of travelling over the past 50 years. One year alone I did 28 trips abroad. I worked in the International Division of a multi-national company. It has only been a case of one bad experience every few years.

[dwhitlow]

Thus making our exports cheaper to the EU importers.

and also making materials more expensive, thus pushing up production costs, and consequently the price that needs to be charged.

When you factor in to account the additional paperwork, admin costs and delays at ports, it is more than likely no change or more expensive than before. WIN? I think not.

plus there the tariffs they may apply if many of the components are not of UK origin. It is a lose for the UK in pretty well every area of trade.

I highly doubt the EU will want to revisit the trade deal.

Agreed. Why would they? They successfully got the one-sided deal they needed.

[F.P.]

Allan, you have fallen foul of TSA, French Immigration and the British Police over the years; are you really that unlucky?

I doubt Allan is any more unlucky than the rest of us.
Visiting the States for work purposes in the late '90's never really had a problem, except loosing my lifetime entry Visa - I was let in on that the first time but had to get a new one for subsequent visits.
Routing through Guam enroute to Truk via Manila - bags opened by US TSA bods in front of me but arriving in Truk I found bag had been opened again but not properly zipped up by more TSA bods. Luckily the way I packed my bags there was no small stuff that could fall out but I definitely wasn't happy.
I think the USA customs and immigration people could do with lessons in civility.

[cazyoung]

The craziest one I saw was an immogration officer at LA who tore into a Swedish diplomat travelling on a Diplomatic Passport, demanding to know exactly what he was going to be doing in the US or he wasn't going to let him in! The guy was on the staff of the Swedish Embassy in Washington.

We have had some very pleasant US officials on our trips to the US but they have been outnumbered by the rude or non-communicative ones. LA is especially bad.

The LA Immigration control officers are really unpleasant. I had to change planes at LAX so was in transit (going to Aukland via Honolulu). I had a visitors visa in my passport he had my onward tickets in front of him and wanted to know why I had come to LA. I decided that saying "because the plane stopped here" probably was not a good idea.

Miami is another fairly obnoxious airport my OH was given a hard time there because he was travelling on an emergency USA passport he just said his old one had expired (which it had some years ago). We discovered he could not use the ?ESTA system as he was born in Boston. He had to make a rapid dash to USA Embassy in London to get a new USA passport. He had stopped using a USA passport when one could travel more freely if you had a return ticket. It is a pain in the bum having to use UK passport to exit UK then the USA passport to enter USA. We have a system to prevent the wrong passport being presented as that makes the British officials a bit pissy as well.

[Nickpicks]

I doubt very much if I'm going to have any problems importing my cells from Revo this year, as I did last year. There may or may not be an additional cost, maybe even the VAT won't be charged on items under the £135 threshold?

According to the new rules, the supplier of your cells has to register with the UK government for VAT, charge you VAT, then pay it to the UK gov. Packages under £135 are chargeable for VAT at the point of sale. Over £135 and they can leave the VAT to be collected from you by the parcel carrier pior to delivery (and they'll charge you for the priviledge)

Even buying second hand stuff from ebay is attracting 20% vat now. I don't know how they expect that to work - presumably Royal Mail will hold onto my £10 used car part until I've paid them the £2 vat and £12 handling fees?

[colinicky]

Lol. You obviously don’t understand U.K. customs laws

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/personal...roduct-imports

“What would happen if” would mean breaking our own customs laws. Hence my incredulation at the level of fackwittery on display.

Maybe you mean to write, what would happen if we changed our laws to match those of Europe to ban the import of meat/dairy from third countries.

Although the LOL is we don’t allow that from third countries already but Europe is ok.

B

Barry I have no knowledge of your specific experience of customs etc but having experienced various customs every week for years doing 3000 to 4000 miles a week on up to 3 week trips or 2 or 3 round trips a week to the EU mainland with everywhere from Greece, Sicily, as far north as Denmark & out into Romania & Poland I have seen an awful lot of things happen with customs of various nations that happen when they shouldn’t
If English Customs officers actually carried out their duties to the letter of the law there would be queues throughout Kent at all times. This would be called “work to rule” . It happens in all parts of haulage industry were a blind eye is turned to certain things . 20 tonnes of Live armaments travelling via Eurotunnel . Tonnes of organophosphate travelling on passenger boats when it should be on a freight only ship.
Even in our own hobby just imagine if every diver had to declare & show every cylinder travelling on ferries to Orkney or Shetland ?

[Chrisch]

....
Even buying second hand stuff from ebay is attracting 20% vat now. I don't know how they expect that to work - presumably Royal Mail will hold onto my £10 used car part until I've paid them the £2 vat and £12 handling fees?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/buying/p...chases?id=4771

[Mikael]

and also making materials more expensive, thus pushing up production costs, and consequently the price that needs to be charged.plus there the tariffs they may apply if many of the components are not of UK origin.

I am worried that some of some of the important suppliers to my company might go out of business..... that could very quickly impact our lead times and selling price.