Royal Dutch Mint - No longer shipping outside of E.U. Very strange rationale given.

On February 9th I placed an order with the Royal Dutch Mint for their newest selection. Within five business days I received my order.

On March 11th I attempted to place another order via my Coin Club login. The purchase was rejected. I sent an e-mail detailing my desired purchases. I received the following reply. I find this statement incredulous.

Dear Sir Sullivan,

Thank you for your e-mail.

Unfortunately it is nog longer possible for you to place an order.

It is no longer possible to place an order when you are from outside the EU. This is due to customregulations. We are very sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours sincerely,

Royal Dutch Mint

Customerservices


Does anyone have any idea what is going on? The Royal Dutch Mint is claiming that their customs officers which by the way must adhere to E.U. Customs procedures will not permit the shipment of coins outside of the E.U.

The Royal Dutch Mint's limitations apply to both gold and silver coins. Is anyone else having problems with the Royal Dutch Mint or any other E.U. based Mint?

I recently have placed orders with the Monnaie de Paris and The Irish Mint. I did not have any problems.

Many thanks,

Sullykerry

 

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My only experience with an EU mint was a Monnaie de Paris order a couple of years ago, and they both grabbed my money, and shipped my order, without any hassle at all.

Have you questioned them about the specific regulations they are relying on?

 

Nothing about it on the Royal Mint web site, but the Dutch site does say it cant ship out of the EU!! this is very strange as I have not read about any law saying that a mint cant send its coins wherever it wants.

De Orc

 

Maybe they are talking about customs regulations of the other countries outside the EU?
I notice some places specify they wont ship coins to Brazil, Russia, South Korea for that reason... But to refuse to sell to ANY other country? funny!

 

Thats mainly because the mail is likely to go missing rather than there been a legal ruling against sending it in the 1st place :smile The UK is part of the EU and we dont have this ruling, I think it is just the dutch LOL

De Orc :kewl:

 

Perhaps,you could place your Dutch Euro coin orders through De Nederlandse Bank.Some countries' mints don't like dealing with the public,especially those outside the country,so you have to approach the central bank in the relevant country.

As to the Irish Mint,you can't buy your Irish Euro coins from there,but you can buy them from the Central Bank of Ireland in Dublin,whose website can be found here; www.centralbank.ie .

Aidan.

 

I know that exporting or importing of coins is prohibited in Iran. Violation will attract severe penalties there. :rolling:

 

A similar policy also applies in both Greece & Turkey.A similar policy is being contemplated by Cyprus,but has really angered numismatists who fear that the collecting of coins more than 250 years old will land them in strife,that is if it is implemented.

Aidan.

 

I am not aware of any EU customs regulation that requires mints to not ship to customers outside the EU. What I could imagine is that, since the EU prices always include VAT, they find it too complicated to have two different product prices. Or maybe the mint has contracts with resellers outside the EU; that is common elsewhere too.

For example, the Finnish Mint will not ship its coins to anything but addresses in Finland; the INCM only ships to Portugal. And if I want to buy a coin from Swissmint (CH, non-EU), I cannot do that since they do not ship to Germany. If I was in, say, Belgium, I could order from them ...

Christian

 

Right, but that does not apply to modern circulation or commemorative coins. As far as I know, the Turkish mint even accepts individual orders from outside the country. The Greek central bank does not, but that is (in the case of contemporary coins) rather a question of distribution than of export restrictions.

Christian

 

Thing that I found strange was that they said it was customs regulations!! (See Original post) I could understand if they had a agreement to sell via a third party but any customs regs would be EU wide and not just Dutch.

De Orc

 

Steve,that is all the more reason why Great Britain should pull out of the E.U..After all,isn't the U.K.'s capital supposed to be London,not Brussels?

Aidan.

 

Seems it is more comfortable to stay inside and just be obnoxious than to finally leave. The UK could join EFTA instead - the free trade area that the country left when it decided, for whichever reason, to join the Community instead. I just don't quite understand what that has to do with the Dutch mint's decision - the Belgian, German, French, Irish etc. mints or numismatic offices all ship to customers outside the EU too.

Christian

 

Aidan the exporting of coins in Greece & Turkey is of anciant coins not modern not sure what it has to do with the UK's mempership though LOL

De Orc

Ps Chrislid not sure I understand your comments any more than I do those of Aidan, why are we obnoxiouse is it because we refuse to join the euro?

 

Nah, I don't care whether the UK uses the euro or not. (Call me selfish but for me it is more important that Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands have the same currency and cash. ) And the British Isles staying outside the passport/travel union (Schengen acquis), well, that would only affect or bother me if I traveled there frequently. I'm just a little tired of the constant EU bashing in the UK. Don't think it's a coincidence that, when you look at Rumors+Facts pages like this one http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/communication/facts/index_en.htm , most of those rumors originate in the UK. Switch to the French language version to see that this is not just language related.

Back to the original subject - I posted a question about that (apparently pretty new) Dutch Mint policy elsewhere since I am curious myself. If I find out more, you'll hear/read from me ...

Christian

 

That's the best way to keep this thread from being closed due to excessive political comments.

 

The only reply to my question over at that euro forum boils down to "BS". Longer version: Of course the KNM is free to limit the range of countries it ships to, but that is not due to any EU wide regulation but a business decision.

Sullykerry - since the mint does not ship to non-EU destinations any more, you could try North American dealers/distributors such as Eurocollections http://www.eurocollections.com/ or RSM http://www.scandmint.com/ instead. Or maybe a Dutch dealer such as http://www.muntplaats.nl/ ...

Christian

 

Royal Dutch Mint - Telephone call 03-14-07

Thank you everyone for adding your comments to my original thread.

I called the Royal Dutch Mint's Customer Service this morning (from the U.S. Tel.011-31-30-2910465; in Europe Tel: 31 (0) 30 2910465) and spoke with Fiona Ammerlaan. Fiona speaks English.

What I found out is that the Royal Dutch Mint is no longer shipping coins to persons outside of the E.U. such as Switzerland, Norway, Canada and the U.S. The reason Fiona gave is that the Mint was finding that the custom duties charged were too expensive! News to me. The last shipment I received cost only Euro 7.50 to send.

The head of Customer Services, Mr. Rene van Dyke (info@coins.nl) will receive a protest e-mail from me. According to Fiona, other E.U. based mints are also concerned about the costs of shipping and the resulting paper work.

If anyone is interested, please send an e-mail to the attn of Rene van Dyke. Also you may wish to check with your Europe (E.U.) mint's customer service department. Britain, Ireland and 25 other countries are all part of the E.U. If all of these mints take the attitude of the Dutch, quality coins from these mints will be severely impaired.

Many thanks,

John T. Sullivan a.k.a. Sullykerry

 

John,I don't blame you for you doing that at all.I'd be peeved off if I had ordered coins from a mint or a central bank in an E.U. member state,paid for my order,& get told,'Sorry,we can't ship coins to a non-European Union country'.To me,that would be a form of theft.

Did you try placing an order with De Nederlandse Bank (the Bank of the Netherlands) as well?

Aidan.

 

What I don't get, is even if there's higher duties they have to pay to ship outside the EU, why can't they just pass that charge onto the customers? I know most customers wouldn't mind that much if they wanted the coins badly enough.