Do you pay Swiss import VAT and customs charges when ordering from BestSecret?
Prices on the Swiss site are in francs with tax already included, and shipping is CHF 6.90 per order. Reports from Swiss coverage describe delivery as duty free, with nothing collected at the door.
The Swiss terms imply full clearance rather than stating it, and the help centre article on shipping could not be loaded. The supporting Swiss sources on duty-free delivery are press and city-guide pages, one of which still quotes CHF 9 shipping and is therefore out of date.
The Swiss terms and conditions at bestsecret.ch are a separate CH document. They state that the prices shown in the shop include statutory VAT, that a flat CHF 6.90 shipping fee applies per order, and that delivery is only made within Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Returns go to a Swiss address, a post office box in St. Gallen. The document never mentions import duty, import VAT or clearance fees as a buyer cost, which fits a seller that clears the parcel itself and bills Swiss VAT at checkout. BestSecret sells far above the CHF 100,000 small-consignment limit, so Swiss VAT registration is effectively mandatory.
The shop's help centre pages load only with JavaScript, so the delivery article could not be read directly. The terms date from December 2023. They name DHL or Hermes as the carriers in the German text while the French text of the same document names the post, and Swiss write-ups describe Swiss Post delivery. Marketplace items sold by partners are shipped by the partner, and the terms do not say how those consignments are cleared.
Marketplace items shipped by a partner rather than by BestSecret itself, where the terms say nothing about who clears the parcel.
“Die im Onlineshop ausgewiesenen Preise enthalten die gesetzliche Mehrwertsteuer.”
“In der Regel fallen für das Mitglied zusätzlich pro Bestellung Versandkosten in Höhe von pauschal 6,90 CHF an.”
“Die Lieferung der Waren nach Maßgabe der AGB erfolgt nur innerhalb der Schweiz und nach Liechtenstein.”
“Die zollfreie Lieferung erfolgt innerhalb weniger Tage mit der Schweizerischen Post.”
“Der Versand kostet in der Schweiz 9 Franken, Zollkosten kommen keine dazu.”
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