Annoying US-UK transaction

[Zharko999]

I recently had dealings with an online watch shop called Lloydas watch and jewellery. It had a listing for a good value 1601 and since I’ve been wanting one for some months I pressed the Buy button. I then pay the full amount on a credit card. Shortly afterwards I received an email cancelling the transaction and giving me an excuse that the seller couldn’t take on the UK import charges. The seller by the way is based in the US and I am based in London. I explained to him that it is the buyer who pays any import charges in their home country not the seller and that he was not obliged to use a courier that went through a firm such as Pitney Bowes who calculate the import charge themselves and take it from the seller (who should have already charged the buyer), while promising that the watch will arrive at its destination without any further charges to the customer.

He then sent me a link to an eBay auction where he had put the same watch he was selling, at the same price that it was offered on his site, but with the eBay global shipping program charges added. I mentioned to him that I always do my best to avoid the eBay global shipping program and anything to do with Pitney Bowes because in my experience the buyer will often avoid UK import charges or pay less than Pitney Bowes have charged.

I see now that he has again changed the eBay item to remove the global shipping but has increased the price by the same amount and also blocked the item from being purchased from the UK.

All a bit strange and I must say that this has put me off buying through this seller. It’s probably just teething troubles and US buyers would not have had any of these problems.