Ladies, Ms Birtles recently wrote in the Daily Express that buying cosmetics etc from Strawberrynet (online site in Hong Kong) was a smart move to save money. Ms Birtles did not add that you must pay customs duty on anything outside the EU that is mailed to the UK.

Be very careful as I think you can only spend about £25 before duty is added. I ended up saving very little when I was hit with a bill of £17 before my goods were released, the value of my goods was only £35!!!!!

actually you have to pay customs duty on any packages worth over £18. It seems to me the easiest way to get around this is to split the stuff you want into orders of less than £18. You might miss out on the extra 5% off you get when you buy three products, but you'll save more by not paying the duty. Also it's free shipping on makeup so it makes no difference how many orders you make.

It also says on the website that they will refund the customs duty. It's often difficult to get money like this out of a company, so I called to see if they really would do it and I was assured that if you do incur customs duty, they'll refund you. All you've got to do is have the receipt and make your claim within 6 months of paying the duty. The customer service representative assured me that there would no problem at all. If you aren't getting any response from them, just keep pestering them. She said they pay 90% of all the claims - they won't pay them if they are over 6 months old or you don't have any receipts, so make sure you get one from customs.

The best way to use strawberrynet is probably to see if the stuff you want works in packages of £18 and if not, get as much as you can and then try and find the other stuff elsewhere.

Does anyone else know where to get cheap makeup?