Shipping warranty replacements to the EU

[Robert_White]

Hello all,

We're a UK based company and have to occasionally send replacements for lost, damaged or faulty items to countries in the EU. We've used IOSS since it went live so rarely any problems with the "normal" international shipping process; if there is an issue it's *always* at the other end due to some country's unfamiliarity with IOSS, the reliability of the relevant country's national carrier or a Royal Mail technical fault - such as happened recently - but we're still a little unsure about what to do to avoid import charges or other fees for shipments that aren't technically 'sales of goods', and for which VAT etc. has already been paid.

I've been unable to find anything that has details set in stone for the correct procedures but do understand that marking it as a gift on the CN22 customs label is not allowed for businesses. Also, if we send something marked as zero value it will of course get flagged (and likely incur some extra cost but these seems to vary from country to country) and if we add the IOSS number to Click & Drop it's declared as looking like an order where VAT or something else has to be collected, but all we want to do is send a replacement free of charge and support our customer after the original transaction was done and dusted and perfectly legal.

Any help is very much appreciated and I'm sure there are others in the same boat. For now is this something we just have to grin and bear with? it does seem unreasonable that there should be extra fees when sending a replacement + postage costs has already lost us money.

Kind regards,
Rob.