I love this. You may recall I told vinzc a while ago that I liked this. Lucky man JP. Smashing gift.

This is lovely.

Oh my. That's gorgeous.
Very generous JP.
Lucky man H.
Great colours. Beautiful image.

very sorry guys and cornish crayon, have had a bit of bad xmas have finally explained to cornish and sorting it now.

havent even opened my present yet as its at my parents but thankyou harveyn

thanks coach

Just got back from the post office and picked up my Secret Jaygo Santa presents!! Massive thank you to you, Jaygo!!

And a huge thank you to you my friend for arranging all the fun. Happy new year.

Great job Rico. Got a great SS from thisisAnton two superb books and Basquiat Tshirt which although I say so myself Zi will look rather good in . Love the books on Basquait and a Street art sketch book 

so top pressie and very grateful to Thisisanton 

Good stuff johnny! Your SS did well.

I got a bill through from customs with a 52 pound Bill attached, my secrete Santa has sent me some nice prints but I am bloody skint st the moment which is irritating to say the least, I am not too sure what I will do, can I claim this charge back?

It probably was - it's a common misunderstanding but marking an item as a gift doesn't mean you won't pay customs duty and VAT, it just raises the VAT threshold very slightly which can save money on lower value items. If it's coming from outside the EU to the UK then even if it's marked as a gift you will still pay VAT if the value is over £36, as well as customs duty if it's over £135 (although that gets waived if the amount of duty payable is under £9). All that marking it as a gift does is raise the threshold for vat from £15 to £36, so that would have no impact in this case. You could of course declare a very low value for customs purposes but not only is that a bit naughty but if it goes missing in transit you're only going to get that value back.

As for claiming it back, in a word no unfortunately - I have been succesful in the past when a customs declaration has been incorrectly filled in by the sender (they included the carriage in the declared value taking it over the vat limit) but it's a long and arduous task and if it's a legit duty charge you'd have a nightmare trying to prove otherwise.

Think you may also want to take as a bit your responsibility as people who do not pay import duties or have to pay them
Regardless will not consider this.
They will just not think about it as all countres different so it's worth ripple mentioning it to the sender

cormishcrayon received his at last :-)