Is LTT Store effectivelly scumming money from EU citizens (IOSS Issue)? Answer: NO! (At least not in my case)

[Torm]

Hello all, this will be a long rant, so I'm sorry in advance.

 

This is a follow-up thread on the issue of LTT Store refusal to share the IOSS (Import One-Stop Shop identification number) with the recipient.

IOSS is a system based on which retailer can charge the VAT directly during the check-out and then provide it to the local government so the customs process is much simpler for the customer.

 

Disclaimer: I have not yet received my shipment and I have not yet paid any fees to the local Customs Administration. I'm basing this post on the available information from the LTT Store statement, experiences from other customers on this forums and information provided to me by the local Customs Administration.

 

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I'm from Czech Republic (part of European Union) and I have ordered goods from LTT store and was charge VAT during the check-out. LTT Store stance, based on generic document from EU without any legal value, is they will not be sharing the IOSS with the recipient. On the first page of the document there is even disclaimer regarding this (see below).

Quote

Disclaimer: These Explanatory Notes are not legally binding and only contain practical and informal guidance about how EU law should be applied on the basis of the views of the Commission’s Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union.

 

LTT Store then refuses to follow the individual state implementation of the law and is effectively causing more harm to the customers; more on that below (for US friends it is as if there is general law directive by the US president, but then individual states have to translate it into their local laws which can vary slightly one from another; hope that make sense).

 

To be more specific in Czech Republic, Local Customs Administration confirmed to me via phone that the retailer is OBLIGATED to provide the IOSS to either the recipient or to the Customs Office (can be printed on the parcel, can be shared with the shipping company etc.). The parcel has not yet arrived to the Czech Republic, so I have not yet seen it and therefore I cannot confirm LTT Store does not print the IOSS there (based on the other replies throughout the forums I believe they do not though, so I will assume so). It was mentioned in the LTT Store statement that they are sharing this number with the shipping companies so they should provide it to the local post services and Customs offices. This process seem to be broken as they also mentioned in the statement. But instead of being oriented on the customer and providing the IOSS to them for the better customer experience, LTT Store doubles down on this and continue in their practice, even though it was proven wrong.

 

Czech Customs Administration confirmed that when they receive a parcel without IOSS they are reaching out to the retailer to provide one.

if IOSS is not provided to the Customs Administration, they are obligated to calculate the new VAT based on what the customer paid to the retailer (including cost of goods, shipping, insurance, and any fees) and charge it to the customer. When I specifically asked about the tax I already paid, they confirmed that the new VAT is calculated based on the overall sum the customer paid, so I would pay tax from the tax I paid via check-out on LTT Store. BONKERS!

 

So my order is:

- 81,87 USD = Value of goods

- 24,99 USD = Shipping

- 17,20 USD = VAT

= SUM 124,06 USD

 

Given I'm not provided the IOSS I have to pay extra handling fee of 4,90 USD (110 CZK).

The new VAT calculated by the Czech Customs Administration is 21% out of (124.06 [order] + 4,90 [fees]) 128,96 USD = 27,08 USD.

Overall VAT + Fees paid to Customs: 31,98 USD (VAT + Fees paid to Customs if I'm provided IOSS: 0,00 USD).

 

LTT is refunding the VAT that has been paid during the check-out, so in my case it is the 17,20 USD but since I have to pay 31,98 USD to the customs, I'm still 14,78 USD short. Just because LTT refuse to share the vital information of their IOSS number. It is not a lot of money and under other circumstances I would not have any issue with paying this. But at this point it is a matter of principal since LTT Store incorrect stance on this issue. Why should I pay extra for somebody else's incorrect stance?

 

And although I understand that the LTT Store is obligated to collect VAT during the check-out, their approach harmed mine (and I believe many more) trust in their ability to actually provide good customer experience. All I wanted was to support my favourite YouTuber and getting some cool swag.

 

What can be done?

Well the simplest solution would be to make sure you are providing the IOSS number to the local customs office. If there is known issue and you are seeing that this system is not working, you need to provide the number to the customer.

If this is not possible, then you need to stop charging the VAT during the check-out not to inflate the price the customers will have to pay to the customs in their countries. Even though you are officially obligated to do so, apparently nothing is stopping you from not providing the IOSS number and therefore effectively not being compliant with the EU laws. So what is the point anyway?

 

I have reached out to the support@lttstore.com 2 days ago and I'm waiting for their reply. Although I understand they have quite a big backlog of tickets from during the holidays, I'm hoping to receive their reply before the goods arrive to my country (during the latest WAN show Linus mentioned 4 days average waiting time).

[Razercake]

My screwdriver I got around end november came to Denmark with no issue, it was stopped in customs then cleared it. The problem was the IOSS nr not following the new tracking nr, when going from the US to EU. which for my package it did without a hitch, so this might be a non issue.

 

IOSS is not a really a law is it? you don't have to use IOSS to ship something to the EU, its just to make it easier. so idk how enforceable that obligation is

[Bad5ector]

So you're basing this on an assumption? Cool beans.

[Torm]

5 hours ago, Razercake said:

My screwdriver I got around end november came to Denmark with no issue, it was stopped in customs then cleared it. The problem was the IOSS nr not following the new tracking nr, when going from the US to EU. which for my package it did without a hitch, so this might be a non issue.

 

IOSS is not a really a law is it? you don't have to use IOSS to ship something to the EU, its just to make it easier. so idk how enforceable that obligation is

As far as I know, IOSS was created by the EU as a directive to the individual states to implement this system as their local law. It was implemented by all the states, in very similar form with very little changes. Retailer does not have to participate on IOSS (unless the volume of sales into EU passes certain threshold) but if they do, they have to provide it. You cannot charge the customer VAT and then not provide necessary confirmation to the customs or the customer that they paid it.

 

1 hour ago, Bad5ector said:

So you're basing this on an assumption? Cool beans.

Not assumption really. LTT confirmed that they have issue provided the IOSS to certain countries, postal services without specific which. They also confirmed that they are not sharing this with the customers. They are also not providing any invoice where this number can be found. The only assumption is that they do not print the number on the package itself (which from other forum post I assume they do not, given their negative responses). So I would not say I'm basic my accusation on assumption. I believe this is relevant question, why LTT Store insists on following this broken process and not actually offering their customers something that actually work meanwhile, before the current process can be fixed.

 

In case I'm wrong (which I'm still hoping for) I will be the first one to apologise to everyone. But meanwhile I have not heard from anybody that I'm wrong. I even called DHL and was told that they do not have the IOSS.

[Bad5ector]

7 hours ago, Torm said:

I cannot confirm LTT Store does not print the IOSS there (based on the other replies throughout the forums I believe they do not though, so I will assume so)

 

7 minutes ago, Torm said:

Not assumption really.

Oh ok, guess I misread your statement.

[Yoinkerman]

I've no love lost for the handling of LTT store in the last two years but holding up couriers as shining angels in the darkness of misinformation and incompetence is misguided at best.

[Torm]

I'm still patiently waiting for the reply from the support at this time. It has been 6 days now. We shall see what they are going to reply (although I'm pretty sure I already know). Package is still on route and so far every post carrier that is involved in transporting the package confirmed that they do not have the IOSS. There is one more from which I'm still waiting on reply.

[Torm]

To whoever is still interested in this thread, I just find it fair to send a resolution after receiving the merchandise I ordered. 

 

I can confirm, that even after all carriers confirmed they do not have the IOSS number and LTT Support declined providing the IOSS number, I received the package today WITHOUT any other extra cost. No double taxation, nothing. After all it seems that the Local post service had the IOSS number all along but were unable to confirm that for some reason, or I don't know. 

 

I still believe that the communication from LTT Store should be more clear, at least explaining why they still refuse to share the IOSS number with the customers, what is so harmful if they do (since everybody else does it). I don't understand it, I guess I never will and I will have to learn to live with this. 

 

Overall to answer my original question "Is LTT Store effectively summing money from EU citizens?" I can wholeheartedly answer to the question BIG FAT NO! I never really believed in the original premise of the topic I made, but few weeks back I was full of doubt and "What If?" questions. I was not sure what to believe since I the replies I received from the Support were slow and lacking in depth information to dispel any confusion. So things can be improved, but my faith has been restored and I can count myself as a happy customer of the LTT Store. 

 

Title of the topic has been modified. 

[Adam Pilolla]

Hey Torm. Thanks for updating this thread with your resolution. We're glad to hear that we could at least make things right for you, even if the road to getting there was a bit bumpy! You'll be happy to know that CS wait times are drastically lower now than when you last spoke to us.

 

I just wanted to let you know that your feedback has been heard loud and clear and also share a little bit of more-detailed context on our decision making in case that's of any interest to you.

 

As participants in the IOSS program, we are required to provide our IOSS tax code to the courier who customs-clears our parcels. The norm for this is that this information is transmitted electronically in such a way that when your post office scans the shipping label, they will be able to see at a glance that this is an IOSS shipment and proceed with delivery accordingly. We can tell that it's working at least some of the time as your most recent post seems to indicate, but it's still not a sure-thing yet.

 

Since the issue of double-taxation first started occurring, we've run the issue up the chain with our various shipping partners multiple times, and every time they have verified that we are submitting this information exactly as we are supposed to.  To be entirely transparent, I'm still not 100% certain that's true, but that's the only conclusion we've been able to draw thus far.

 

We haven't given up on trying to solve this, however if that is actually true then we can only assume that some type of issue is occurring over at customs in some countries (and double-taxation does happen in some countries more than others). What we also know is that we are not the only retailer having this type of problem, which leads us to believe that this could be systemic rather than simply being an "us" problem. I've even heard from some customers who've dealt with this same exact problem from retailers much larger and with much more influence than us.

 

I realize that when this occurs you might be used to some retailers just giving you their IOSS-code. Again, to be transparent, we're aware that we could be doing that (it certainly wouldn't be against the law to do so), however this solution is not recommended as, while incidents are uncommon, publicizing this type of information does slightly increase our store's risk of being the victim of fraud, which we'd prefer to avoid if at-all possible. That said, if we continue to not be able to find a resolution on this going forward that type of solution does remain on the table for us, and we'll change the wording of this page to reflect that if it ever changes.

 

Anyway, I hope that context helps a little and I hope you enjoy the merch!

[Torm]

Hi Adam, thank you for the insight. This really helps and I bet some other customers might be reading this too and finding your words reassuring that you are actually doing the maximum you can. Keep up the good work!

[_thebash]

Update from my side @Adam Pilolla - I am assuming Finland is one of those countries where this regularly happens?

My 2nd store purchased has just arrived in Finland and I have been notified I need to pay tax again. I have submitted a support ticket but just putting this here so people know to be prepared to pay tax twice and have the money ready to do so!