Japan shopping - Custom charges reversed (UK)

[meat 135]

I used Tenso to transfer a bunch of my Japanese shopping to me in the UK a month ago. Two out of three parcels got held by customs and I was charged heftily for them. 

 

I appealed against their decision and received this letter after about 3 weeks:

 

I don’t think it works every time but in case anyone wants to try and challenge HMRC/  Border Force’s decision, what I did was try to proof that the parcels contained “personal belongings”, which are not liable for customs under HMRC’s regulations. The proforma invoices/ custom invoices and the waybills Tenso attached to my parcels state that they are “personal effects” and I also highlighted the fact that the sender and receiver names are the same (even though one of them has Tenso.com as the sender). I sent all originals of custom declaration forms, proforma invoices, custom charge letters, charge labels and the Form BOR286 for each parcel to Border Force. If you have a photocopy of your flight ticket, that’d be even better. But I don’t in this case as I ordered everything online but I am lucky that they have reversed the charges.