EU & Canada Shipping Update

EU / Canada Shipping Update

We have been putting off writing this blog post for quite a while, because, honestly, it’s not the news we wanted to share.

Over the last few months, we’ve had so many lovely messages from customers across Europe asking when they’ll be able to order from us again. We know some of you have been waiting patiently for us to work out what on earth is going on so here we are, finally explaining it.

And we’re really sorry to say that for the foreseeable future, we can no longer sell and ship our products directly to customers in the EU.

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It comes down to new EU product legislation

New product safety legislation in the EU known as the General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) has introduced a whole new set of requirements for businesses selling consumer products into the EU.

The rules apply to businesses outside the EU too, which means they affect little UK businesses like ours selling directly to European customers.

The requirements cover things like product traceability, safety information, technical documentation and having an EU-based “Responsible Economic Operator” connected to the products we sell. There are also additional requirements around the information that needs to appear on online product listings.

We used to pay for one legal “Responsible Economic Operator” who would represent all of Europe for us (which was already an expense) but now we would need a representative in each and every European country. On top of this, it seems the EU have been somewhat inspired by the tariffs in the USA and are also asking for a slice of the pie with a €3 fee added onto each line item - each line item, NOT each order!

So this isn’t a question of us doing some paperwork and increasing our prices - we have literally been forced out of selling into the EU as we're a small business. Previously we sold between 10 - 30 orders a year to each country totalling maybe a few hundred overall. It just about made sense to sell to Europe before the new legislation, but definitely not now.

We were hopeful for a while we could use Etsy as a middle man, but sadly the same issues occur using that platform too.

So, incredibly reluctantly, we've made the decision to stop taking orders from EU countries.

Let’s talk about Canada…

There might be slightly better news on the horizon for Canadian customers after one loyal MPS fan got in touch to help us with our problematic Canadian postal operations. (Shout out to Cyndee - thank you for writing to us!)

It appears that we were trying to get every parcel to land in each province in Canada and ensure all taxes and duties were paid at checkout to arrive problem free at the doorstep of the customer. However, most parcels were getting stuck or incurred more fees on top of what the customer had already paid, hence why we had to stop Canadian orders.

But as Cyndee pointed out, it's quite normal for goods from overseas to have duties paid on collection (not via our website as we were trying to do).

So now all we need to do is configure the correct set-up with our postal provider, Royal Mail and do some adjustments on our website.

Sadly, our Royal Mail rep is on sick leave currently and we’ll wait for some solid advice from them as well as getting the technical bits on our website ‘tinkered with’.

In essence - no you can’t place an order in Canada just yet - but hopefully soon!

Finally, we’re really sorry if you’re affected by all of this red tape which seems to dominate all our business operations at the moment. If you happen to know somebody in the UK or the USA, who can place and receive an order on your behalf…then forward it to you personally marked as a gift…this would seem to be the only way around this crappy situation.

A heartfelt sorry from all of us, we will continue to work towards finding a resolution if the opportunity arises!

Much love Hayley and the MPS team x