Hyaku

Well, I'd like someone to tell Mika that some of his fans are not happy about this and that the merchandise supply at his concerts doesn't match demand. It's odd that it is totally US-based, though (presumably because his music publisher is American), as they must ship more stuff to Europe than they sell at home. All sent by air mail ... Is it about maximising profit? The rules on duty seem to be applied in varying ways, judging by the complaints littering the internet about this, especially when people send presents to others that then get hit with tax (and the fee). Perhaps posters are VAT free - but you may have just been lucky! The sticker on the parcel suggested visiting www.hmrc.gov.uk and searching for "Notice 43".

That explains it. We shall not be using the shopus.mikasounds.com site again! On the subject of duty, if your order is less than £15 (including post) you don't pay tax/duty. Above it, VAT at 20% plus £8 (if Royal Mail are delivering). Or, you could always cancel the order ...

I sent an email to the store about this and it led to a chat about the whole order. We picked up the t-shirt this morning. £.6.14 VAT added (I think I also paid US sales tax) PLUS Royal Mail charge £8 handling fee! Still, a happy Mika fan - until she opened the package to find that the t-shirt isn't the same dark brown/grey colour she thought it was at the concert, but black ...

Have you got anything yet? We had the same; the Paris concert ran out of S t-shirts (most of those in the queue wanted S and they could have sold many more than they had stocked) so we bought on the online shop. However, we have had information about it being sent. 7 weeks later and a card through the door saying we had to pay customs duty! The T shirt was $35 and ended up being $42 with postage, £32 in total which was fine. However, with customs (and the excessive fee Royal Mail charges for collecting this) the total is nearly £47. I realised that the store was probably US based because of the $ prices, but hadn't realised that the t-shirt was also sent from there. I have told the Mika Store that they ought to be distributing from Europe for European customers. Moral of the story - buy your t-shirt on the way in to the concert, unless you need XL or bigger (because they had loads of them left! Who did the stock control?!)