Originally Posted by
jtm893
Does anyone here have experience purchasing goods in an EU/Euro using nation AND used Global Blue for their tax refund?
Yes.
For furture reference: At the very least, I'd always take a picture of the stamped refund form with its refernece number and stamp visible. But if valuable, I would either post using registered post, or take to a refund processing desk, and get the receipt for the refund being credited back. (I wouldn't take cash, due to the fee charged, but get the receipt for a credit back to card).
According to some things I have read (and what I assumed at time of purchase), the commission that Global Blue takes is the difference between the VAT and the return that is listed on the tax paperwork. On the watch I purchased, the refund was 12%, so GB's commission is 8% since the VAT is 20%. Why are there people out there receiving less than 12%??
Firstly, as other have said, VAT is (generally) added at 20% to the price without, so the VAT makes up 16.6% of the VAT inclusive price.
However, not every country applies the same rate of VAT, and some items attract VAT at differnet rates, or are zero rated. When such items are included on a refund form at differnet rates, it sometimes confuses people.
Far more importantly there is the question of the fee.
Obviously not all shops use GlobalBlue as their processing partner, some do it themselves, others use other third party companies. However, even with companies that use global blue, I've seen some variaiton in the fees charged.
It is not always a pure percentage model. Some have fix fee (rare), others have fixed fee + percentage element.
(the pure percentage model does usualy have a minimum value, which achieves the effect of making it a fixed minimum fee, however fixed fee + percentage sometimes has a lower percentage fee rate on the remainder of the balance)
For instance, my sister was with me on my trip and she ended up purchasing a scarf for about $304 U.S, or $250 Euro at the time of purchase with a 1.21 exchange rate. She just received her refund back, and it was only $29. That's a bit less than the 12% we were promised even with the further weakening of the Euro to 1.15.
€ 250 price, would have included €41 of VAT.
The 29 USD you quote is currently €25.62.
That's probably about as much as I would expect, given minimums, etc. They have taken €15 for processing.
Did globalblue charge you any admin fees for doing a currency conversion? Did you elect for posted check or credit back to credit card?
Does anyone else have any experience with Global Blue purchasing goods overseas, and not receiving the proper amount back? Today is 1/20/15, and I still haven't seen my refund hit my AMEX, but my sister received hers back on 1/15/14.
I your assume 1/6/15 is really 6/1/15 - as we are not in June yet. As such, I've had many sucessfull postal (i.e. forms submitted by post) refunds take far longer than that to process.
And I've had some go fast, others go slow.
I wouldn't be panicing yet. I wouldn't even have done a reconciliation yet. Not for another few weeks. It could eaisly have been quicker, but penty have taken a bit longer than this.