A quick note for customers ordering from the US and UK:
All prices on the website are shown excluding 19% German VAT for you.
If your shipping address is outside the EU, VAT is removed automatically — you do not need to do anything extra.
Recently, some US card payments have been declined on the first try because certain banks are being overly cautious with EU transactions. Usually, a quick call to your bank solves this. PayPal has generally worked without issues.
The second topic is import/customs charges.
Instead of simply declaring the items and shipping them normally — leaving the final import charges to be determined at delivery — I have found a better solution to help avoid unreasonable surprise fees(in some cases up to 30–50% import taxes from what I have heard).
To make this process safer and more predictable, I use a DHL service called PDDP whenever possible. This allows me as the seller to prepay the import-related charges through DHL in advance, which gives the best chance of securing the lowest and most accurate rates while also reducing complications for you as the customer.
So far, the actual charges I have paid through this system have generally fallen in the range of around 3–12%.
For eligible orders, you may therefore see an extra checkout line called “PDDP Deposit.”
How it works:
- the deposit is based on the goods value and will be 12%
- I use it to cover import charges and DHL handling fees
- once DHL sends me the final invoice(usually about 30 days after delivery), I calculate the actual amount
- any difference is returned to you as store credit
Up until now, I have been paying these charges myself first and then contacting customers once I receive the final invoice from DHL, trusting that they would reimburse the amount afterwards. Thankfully, this has not caused any issues so far, but it is clearly a trust-based system that could become messy over time.
Adding the PDDP Deposit at checkout makes the process much cleaner, more transparent, and more predictable for both sides.
Important:
The relevant limit is based on the goods value, not the final checkout total.
Current ranges:
- USA: eligible up to $800 goods value
- UK: eligible from £135 to £900 goods value
If your order is close to the limit, it is often smarter to split it into multiple smaller orders. Even with extra shipping, this can still be much cheaper than ending up outside the supported range.
If you want to split an order and your discount code only works once, just send me a quick message and I will help manually.
I know this adds a bit of complexity, but for now it is the safest and most transparent way I have found to keep US and UK orders running smoothly.
