That's a dirty piece of smallprint. Feels like it should be ruled as contravening statutory consumer rights, I'd be interested to see if anyone's succesfully challenged this charge as it seems entirely punitive and simply there to dissuade customers from leaving. I'd have half a mind to send written notice to BT customer services notifying them of your cancellation given contract ending and your refusal to accept the £30 charge unless someone can provide adequate justification for the charge. In the meantime, I'd stop any Direct Debit or Standing Order as soon as you've provided notification of intent to cancel! Watch them try and take payment then.

£30 sounds quite like a disconnection fee, not a service cancellation fee. You want to avoid physical disconnect at ALL costs because you'll then need to spend £70 (or more) getting a new line connection when normally a migration leaves the line active and just transfers billing duties over to another provider (unless you move to an LLU provider who has their own equipment in the exchange alongside Openreach's gear, but that's outside the scope of this question). This now-common practice is called Carrier Pre-Select (CPS) billing. Probably a combination of poorly understood (or vaguely asked) question, poorly informed rep and inadequately explained options. If you've reached the end of your contract period, and BT haven't automatically rolled you over onto another contract without even asking -- which they're known to do -- it shouldn't cost you ANYTHING. £30 sounds suspiciously like either two months' line rental or a month's line rental and broadband. By the way, whatever you do DON'T GET VIRGIN MEDIA ADSL. If you're in a cabled area, fine - be aware they're no better or worse than BT for the most part - but their ADSL is hands down one of the, if not THE, worst ADSL offering in the UK. It's the rare trifecta of dismal speed, dismal customer service and dismal price.

The interesting thing is the legal concensus that it's unenforceable and uncollectable - couriers effectively loan you the money to cover UKBA charges then invoice you in arrears, plus their admin fee - but the system is quite mature and the wheeze is universally practiced by all mail handlers in the UK. From reading this UKBF thread, there's some right horror stories as to what people have had to do to obtain their items from bonded warehouses at point of entry when they decline their mail handler (read: courier) permission to process the customs work on their behalf... ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/archive/index.php/t-245684.html At least the silver lining in all this is that your courier delivered the package first and followed with a (debatably enforceable) invoice, instead of sitting on it (I sometimes wonder if literally, too) like Royal Mail does. It's infuriating having your items held hostage.

And keep us apprised of any developments!

Stu beat me to it. :> No, he's not Martin Lewis. With regards to the £5 "pain threshold" point -- yeah, I find it's entirely dependent upon what the courier company chooses to charge. Some are scumbags and charge over a tenner which is just unforgiveable, that's purely punitive. £5 is just about justifiable IMO but it's still a bit frustrating to pay it. With regards to the law in question - see the 2000 Postal Services Act, as amended 2011. (I've not read the entire Act nor have I compared it to the original 2000 enacted version, but if you contact Martin on Twitter @concretebadger he'll likely be able to point you in the right direction. Full text is available at legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/5/contents)

Stand your ground (silently). If they insist on pursuing this legally, you could call their bluff - if they say it's not a gift, you have the sender able to provide written confirmation that it was a gift and you should already have proof (either from them or from the CN22 on the box) as to the declared value and contents. Chances are they'll silently drop it after a few sternly worded letters from Joe Bloggs, Head of Legal and Tea-Making, if the value to them isn't sufficient and their workload is too high from Christmas deliveries. However be mindful that calculated Duty and VAT charges TAKE SHIPPING COSTS INTO ACCOUNT - so whilst 50 CAD is only ~32 CAD, with the postage costs included that will tip it over the 40 GBP threshold at which Import VAT is calculated and levied. IMHO I'd just play dumb, not reply at all and see what happens but of course take my advice with a spoonful of sodium. If they were to consider pursuing an action in the county court it would likely cost them more to file than they'd recover in costs, but if they have a team dedicated to just handling small claims cases you never know. It won't cost you anything to be non-cooperative, though. The HMRC link posted earlier in the thread is essential reading in any case.

Sorry JMO, you're SOL on this one. RM clearly indicate that Special Delivery service is the only appropriate one for sending cash or money in any tenderable or bearable form: royalmail.com/customer-service/personal-customers/sending-mail/sending-valuables-and-cash It's up to the goodwill of their customer complaints department to offer any kind of refund in this scenario. A nice letter may do wonders. Related reading: postoffice.co.uk/prohibited-items

I've used ParcelMonkey a few times recently; most recently I was arranging a return for the boss and PM came out cheapest on their bulk rate. No great surprise there, but what did pique my interest was the definition of 'perishable items' in their T&Cs -- as well as their no-compensation and prohibited items list. In their T&Cs (parcelmonkey.co.uk/terms-and-conditions) it reads (emphasis added): I couldn't believe it when I read that they'd defined designer clothing, apparel and accessories - over £250 in value, no less - as a perishable item! How is this justifiable? Subsequent Googling of other couriers' T&Cs with regards to perishable items yielded only the standard fare; foodstuffs, livestock or stuffed animals, etc. In addition, PM's "no-compensation carriage" list is bizarre (parcelmonkey.co.uk/prohibitedItems.php) and includes a mixture of reasonable and completely bizarre specifications with no promise of compensation should they be damaged. (Even if they're packaged correctly?!) This all strikes me as overly optimistic on their behalf and vastly overreaching; of course you have to consent to the T&Cs before you book a courier - so should a complaint ever arise over an item damaged or nondelivered they can just fold their arms and say "well, as you agreed, we hereby refer you to the response in Arkell v. Pressdram" and subsequently ignore you. Now whilst any company's entitled to state what it wishes or does not wish to carry on behalf of customers, if the individual couriers' own T&Cs are less restrictive than the third party broker (Parcel Monkey) would it not be arguable that their own T&Cs are unenforceable as the additional restrictions are arbitrary and, in some cases, punitive? I can't afford to send a laptop hoping it'll get broken to then file a test case, so I'm interested to hear what people think of all this from a purely academic standpoint. Are there any relevant precedents?

The law changed last year apparently which now allows RMG (or I believe any other mail handling agent, i.e. courier) to process post and withhold until admin fees and customs charges are paid in full. In reality couriers can't hold on to the volume of customs-cleared items so they ship them out and bill in arrears; it makes too much money for Royal Mail so they dedicate a bit of SO space to this enterprise. Martin at concretebadger.net - apologies, you'll have to load his site manually as I've not got high enough postcount -- look for the Parcelforce articles) has posted a few articles tracking his saga of receiving post from overseas subject to these fees and it makes for highly interesting reading if you're new to import duty and VAT and the admin charges levied by couriers and RMG. Be grateful you were only stung for £5 and not £8, £10 or even £12 (or more!) as some couriers - Parcelforce et al - impose without recourse. I've also tried importing goods into the UK and requesting them to be marked as "goods to be cleared by importer" but it's made no difference. When I went to pick up a parcel once which had been flagged by UKBA and processed by Royal Mail, the man working behind the sorting office counter explained that the Revenue are cracking down on US and Canadian imports more than others (e.g. Hong Kong, Taiwan etc) -- although to an extent it's still pot luck whether your parcel's taken to one side or allowed straight through. Personally I wouldn't mind paying £5 admin fee given I think I have a fairly good understanding of what's required by the mail handlers. £5 is the pain threshold for admin charges - I've probably made a decent enough saving on buying the item from the States that £5 and a few bob for the actual import VAT is neither here nor there. It's the occasions when I've ordered something, and Royal Mail's admin fee is as much as the value of the item itself, that's really ****ed me off!

A COP is as good as Recorded Delivery from what I've garnered. Precedent has established it as a formalised proof of posting; it's 50% of the Recorded Delivery service (the only paid-for aspect of RD being the ePOD). Where I work, whenever we post items out First Class to customers over a certain value we always ask for a COP which we can retain to prove that the item left our possession. This also means when the odd customer files a bogus nondelivery claim, we can provide proof of delivery which shifts liability for redelivering another item until a reasonable amount of time (14 days) has been allowed for delivery. Some people still don't realise First Class is a 'best effort' service...!