As a background, this is not a complaint, merely a story told, a lesson learned, and knowledge forwarded to my brethren here for their future use as they may see fit. More background: In October I ordered a flat cap (sorry Jock, couldn't help myself) and one of the clearence wool kilts from Scotweb, The ones that were make up custom for someone then either returned or never picked up that they sell at a discount----it happened to be almost perfectly sized and in a tartan I desired. I requested standard shipping, specifically preferring to not use FEDEX due to their customs fees policy. Due to a delay in manufacture of the cap (long story not really pertinent to this story) my overall order was delayed several months. I inquired by phone at least once, again specifying that I did not want shipping via fedex. I subsequently recieved the package about 4 months after order, shipped via FEDEX, with a followup bill from fedex for and additional $60US in customs duty and fedex handling charges (roughly $40 in duty and $20 in add on fees). These fees negated any discount on the cost of the kilt or cap due to sale prices or clearence pricing. In an email exchange with Scotweb service people regarding why Fedex had been used rather than surface shipping I recieved the folllowing:

"unfortunately due to the weight of the package we were sending to you
this was too heavy for Airmail to accept on their small packets service which we use. As such, we upgraded, free of charge, to our Fedex courier service. I have searched over your order and can find no instruction for us to not use Fedex and only use Royal Mail or Parcelforce. If we had seen this we would have informed you that the package was too heavy for Airmail and that we do not use the Parcelforce service. Our packages are not sent by particular services based on the value of the items, rather they are sent based on the weight."

The order was for a 13oz 8yd kilt and one small very lightweight cap, but it had to go fedex, which means it was destined to get hit with duty and FEDEX add on fees for handling that duty, at this time about 17.5% duty and minimum $20 fees. I realize that duties are the responsibility of the purchaser/importer, but I think we all know that other retailers in the UK can and do use other courier services than FEDEX that typically get through customs without duties, although that is no guarantee.

So the moral of this story is that when you consider ordering a kilt from Scotweb anticipate that it will be sent by fedex, and figure in the additional expense of duty of 17.5% of the value of the kilt plus an additional $20 or so in Fedex fees.