Moving House Furniture From Uk To Los

[scorpio]

My wife wants to return to Thailand in July, we have some very good furniture in our house in UK so we want to ship it over, the removal company in UK have quoted us £1,600 to do this, door to door. But a friend of mine told me that he shipped over a big box of clothes from UK to Los and he was taxed 4000 thb for this? Can anyone shed any light on this, thanks

[astral]

If you have a work permit issued in the last 6 months then no import duty is payable,

the same is true for a Thai returning home.

Otherwise duty is required by the customs officials.

A good Thai shipping agent will be able to negotiate a fixed price for you.

4000 baht ($100) sounds very reasonable!!

[thaihome]

If your wife has lived outside Thailand for a year on a some sort of residence/work permit she can import one container duty free.

TH

[Soutpeel]

4000 baht ($100) sounds very reasonable!!

Yes for a "big box of clothes" but the OP is talking about shipping furniture !...

I would think 1600 quid would be about right

[QED]

4000 baht ($100) sounds very reasonable!!

Yes for a "big box of clothes" but the OP is talking about shipping furniture !...

I would think 1600 quid would be about right

I think 1600 quid was the removal fee...

I did this 6 years ago, and they charged me a nominal 12,000 baht (furniture, electricals, kitchen stuff etc).

[edwinchester]

Try to find a good shipping agent who will do door to door and also negotiate the 'tea money' for you.

I was very happy with ours and actually paid up on delivery of our goods at our house in Thailand.

The actual agent in Thailand spoke reasonable English even to the point of calling the 'taxes' 'under the table money'.

[scorpio]

The furniture I would think would consist of 1 container, 1 large sofa,large mattress, bed, single bed,3tvs,frige,cooker,maybe few boxes of clothes and small items such as pictures, electrical goods etc. Our romoval company quoted 1600 though I think that is only removal. So if my wife puts removal on her name can she get 1 container tax free? Is this correct? Has anyone done a removal recently?

Than you in advance. P.s yes my wife has lived outside Thailand in UK now for 4 years and has a valid residence visa

Edited November 25, 2011 by scorpio

[thaimate]

We shopped 22 tea chests here with seven seas worldwide(who were excelent) we shipped them in my wifes name to my sister in laws address in Bangkok. i had nothing to do with it being a farang ,there were no import duties ,no tea money and no one asked for a baht ,when the goods arrived in Bangkok ,we got a phone call from the agent to arange delivery ,on finding we actually lived in Pattaya for a small extra charge they sent it here.

if your wife is a returning resident of Thailand .THERE SHOULD BE NO EXTRA CHARGES OR IMPORT DUTY.

ps for 1600 quid i would sell it and buy stuff here.

Edited November 25, 2011 by thaimate

[astral]

ps for 1600 quid i would sell it and buy stuff here.

The OP did say

we have some very good furniture

£1600 will not buy many good quality items in Thailand

[hotandhumid]

Your wife wants to return to Thailand? WOW, there's a shock!

Question is, do YOU want to leave the UK to come and live in this country?

[Khun Jean]

Just shipped ours for 1500 euro. We have been in The Netherlands for longer than a year so we can bring all of our stuff over without paying taxes.

One thing to consider is that you are allowed 1 piece of every appliance. Having 3 tv's can be a problem.

Some money under the table and the container will not be inspected. 4-5k should be enough:)

[roamer]

ps for 1600 quid i would sell it and buy stuff here.

The OP did say

we have some very good furniture

£1600 will not buy many good quality items in Thailand

Indeed. We had a pocket sprung mattress hand made in a specialist workshop in the UK, offers the worlds best sleep and do we ever know that when we travel anywhere . Couldn't buy that anywhere in LOS. Will be worth whatever it costs to get one shipped over when we move back.

[TommyDee]

what ever you do and what ever advice you get...keep a full and complete inventory of what you ship, together with approx age and value ( at auction). the vallues will be low of course but supplying a full inventory to your receiving agent will speed up release and reduce the "taxes" to a minimum.

having a UK bed here is a blessing, as I did this with a 20ft container. a dish washer is a rarity here and being able to have my "stuff" around me makes this home to me. good luckl

[meatboy]

there has been many posts on this subject and many so called answers,i posted last month to a tv member to give me an answer why my wife who had lived in uk.20years had to pay 12,000bht to get her second hand clothes ect. maybe its because her thai passport showed she had a farang surname.if we still have the invoice i will warn others to avoid this agent,i think the op should find out who the handling agent is in bkk.but then that is no guarentee you wont be screwed like we were,the agent said they had to pass our shipping to another co.who was licenced to enter the customs area,we had the name checked out and found out the 2co's.where of one.

[scorpio]

So can anyone tell us a good shipping agent in Bangkok please

[Chivas]

I love the way some suggest slip so an so 5k, and no problem !!

[micky44]

hi fella, wew are planning the same as you, if you get any recomendations of good shipping companys could you please pass them on to me. cheers micky.

[Ricardo]

I love the way some suggest slip so an so 5k, and no problem !!

Absolutely, that's part of the clearing-agent's job, not the customers' !

[Chivas]

I love the way some suggest slip so an so 5k, and no problem !!

Absolutely, that's part of the clearing-agent's job, not the customers' !

Roll as many eyes as you like, but it still doesn't make it right.

[scorpio]

Th

hi fella, wew are planning the same as you, if you get any recomendations of good shipping companys could you please pass them on to me. cheers micky.

Hey micky we are moving from n.ireland and we are using a company called magimpsey and co. Google them. they also deal with great britain.

[Khun Jean]

I love the way some suggest slip so an so 5k, and no problem !!

Absolutely, that's part of the clearing-agent's job, not the customers' !

Roll as many eyes as you like, but it still doesn't make it right.

TiT!

Before getting worked up, it works like this.

A container arrives and the ones responsible for inspecting look at the BL, if they see personal households AND they see that the goods are send from a country that does the inspection before it is shipped AND they see it is brought to Thailand by a foreigner having a visa/workpermit or a Thai citizen who has been to another country for more than a year they won't even bother to open the container. In my case they did not even bother to check the container on the Dutch side. I loaded it myself and the driver was watching. Very detailed shipping list with all items described and counted. The shipping company is trusted so clearing it was done in 5 minutes. Did money come in the picture, no. But it is more as, i do you a favor next time you do me a favor. all based on trust.

On the Thai side,even if they inspect the whole container they will be unable to charge duty on the items. Sure they can try, but if you hold your ground they will release the container anyway.

4-5k to the agent to speed this up is just a way to get in front of the others, they still can inspect if they want to.

In reality, they go for the 4-5k and get it over with. No risk for them as they trust the agent, more convenient for us.

In Thailand money replaces "favor".

Edited November 27, 2011 by Khun Jean

[mark131v]

Th

hi fella, wew are planning the same as you, if you get any recomendations of good shipping companys could you please pass them on to me. cheers micky.

Hey micky we are moving from n.ireland and we are using a company called magimpsey and co. Google them. they also deal with great britain.

We used a company called Remnev International last March, we had spent a lot of time and effort sorting through various companies and found lots of lies and misinformation but these guys where honest and upfront and I would highly recomend them, they are based in the London area and we dealt with a lady called Sadh they turned up when they said they would, did a good clean good and arranged all the Thai side as well and was still a lot cheaper than most of the quotes we had

Mark

[thaihome]

I have moved internationally several times over the past 10 years, Asian Tigers/Transpo/KC Dat has done an excellent job each time.

TH

[ang]

We have used abs-relocations twice and they are excellent in everything they do.

[Khun Jean]

Well, our container arrived on 28 december and our agent which name i shall not mention informed us that we had to pay 450US$ Tax and 15.000 baht for someone at the terminal wanting some new years drinking money. (A lot more than the 4-5k mentioned by the agent before)

I told the agent to forget it and canceled the order. Asking another agent whose name i also shall not mention came with the same numbers and that agent was also send home.

I decided we had to do it ourselves, my wife kept saying 'this is Thailand, this is how it works', but i am stubborn and when you not even try........ (With telephone numbers from the terminals manager, and hotline number from the Ombudsman in my pocket)

I wrote an e-mail to the manager of the terminal asking the procedure and costs involved with clearing a container. I got a detailed answer and attachments with the costs for different handlings. I also asked a name for me to contact when something was not clear. I was very clearly informed that none of their employees will ask for money! The terminal is Unithai Container Terminal, a private company.

With this information we first went to customs where our very detailed packing list was found to be a little to much detailed and we were asked to simplify it making categories, like clothing 10 box, xx US$, xx weight, furniture, electrical appliances. After we did that with help from the customs officer who we gave 400 baht tip for the extra amount of work to be done. Conclusion 700 baht tax because we brought over 2 fridges. (Technically this is still within the tax free items you can bring but i was not going to complain about little money). After this the container was opened in our presence and the contents inspected. This process took 4 hours. 3 hours 45 minutes to prepare the paperwork, 15 minutes inspecting the container.

Having the paper from customs and the delivery order (D/O) from the shipping company we paid 10.000 baht deposit to be allowed to transport the container to our condo. We paid for everything almost 12.000 baht. That is including customs, extra storage for container (160 baht/day), use of the crane to put the container on the truck, truck rental, 5 people to help unpacking.

The agent asked 600US$ (18.000 baht) but with the above mentioned 'extras' it would have been a total of 48.000 baht.

Conclusion: 36.000 baht saved with a days work and from now on F.. the agent$!

Edited January 5, 2012 by Khun Jean