DSF

Hi folks,

I just ordered a set of pigment inks from Cobra which they despatched a few days ago. The shipping was heavy I know at $72.10 to Northern Ireland but they came highly recommended so I went ahead with the order.

Got home to a note from UPS saying they had tried to deliver and would retry, but there was a Cash On Delivery payment due of £42.49!

I queried this with Cobra as I assumed it was a mistake only to be informed that it was a "brokerage fee" charged by UPS and nothing to do with them.

Did some digging and found this article, which claims that a large portion of this fee claimed to be for tax/customs reasons is actually returned to UPS. OK it's based on a US to Canada purchase but it apparently applies to the UK too.

http://www.morroccomethod.com/blog/ups- ... the-truth/

Has anyone had this experience before? £110 for the inks plus £55 carriage was painful enough but then an additional £42.49 in fees is a sickener. Nearly £100 for carriage!

Looks like I'm gonna have to cough up or I won't get my inks at all. A painful experience I won't be repeating, a word of warning to anyone considering doing the same, investigate first. I don't know if it's just UPS or all shipments out of the US or what?

Your £42 is going to include VAT, a handling fee and customs duty. UPS paid HMRC all of those for you. They cleared it though customs and Border Force hence their handling fee.

Fair enough I suppose, I just hadn't factored it in as I wasn't aware of it. Now you mention the VAT that would make more sense. Ah well, something else to consider when it comes to replenishing stock.

Cheers Gary.

Hi Gary, did you not think about the sublisplash, it's more or less on your door step compared to America and would of saved you a fair bit of money?
Steve

Hi, if you mean me I bought the pigment inks for use with non-sublimation products, cotton tees etc. I did check your website at the time but I didn't see any pigment inks and I specifically wanted Cobra inks after a long while researching as long as the cost wasn't horrendous. It's actually turned out too expensive so I'll probably be looking closer to home next time. But thanks

Paul.

I had this experience also with paper i ordered from some company in china a few months back, UPS for the delivery i think it was trying to charge me extra. To be honest i never paid it and the items where delivered the next day and have not heard anything since.

Can I ask why you'd go through all of this to get Cobra inks? I looked at Cobra myself as I needed a 9 colour inkset but iof you just use 4 or 6 colours is there any benefit?

What printer are you using?

Justin as a newbie I spent ages looking through here and a tee shirt printing forum for the best inks to use for printing onto 100% cotton tees. I had already followed the advice of a guy and bought dye ink but subsequently found out pigment ink was much more durable although it needs more care maintenance wise. I picked Cobra as it seemed the best available.

Ross at inkjetcarts.us could supply his too and he quoted me a much smaller carriage charge (inks about the same cost as Cobra) but I had already ordered from Cobra and I guess I'd still cop for the brokerage fee as they are in the US too.

I also checked out Coralgraph pigment inks but they seemed to stop stocking it at the time I was looking around.

I have an Epson 1500W.

Would this not suit your purposes? -

https://www.inkexpress.co.uk/catalogue/ ... fTA_RnTXqA

Thanks for the link webtrekker, I'll keep that for next time. I couldn't see a direct match but I'm sure they could do something they're very close. And they're UK :biggrin: