AVOID CHESSBARON who is a rude, vulgar, and insulting person.

Horrible experience with ChessBaron.
I expressed my surprise about having to pay fees and taxes without any information about their nature provided by the carrier. I am unhappy that no details about these fees and taxes were given; the site deliberately hides this information, although it should highlight that the carrier may demand taxes. The seller should detail the nature of the fees and taxes and their calculation methods to the customers, instead of hiding this unpleasant surprise until the last moment. The seller simply replied that I am an idiot and that he would not respond to any of my future emails. I am more than shocked by the indecent and outrageous behavior of this seller.

I decided to refuse the parcel and request a full refund by opening a dispute with PayPal. This seller is a disgrace and should be avoided at all costs. I now understand why there are so many ultra-negative comments about him on various internet forums. This is not a professional sales site but an amateur who sells anything and everything without any professionalism, and he allows himself to insult his customers at the slightest disagreement.

Chess Baron is run by a rude, vulgar, and insulting person. Here his respond to my email : 
"You can't cancel the order - it's already in France! If we receive the item back, we'll refund it. But if we are charged for having it returned (which is very likely), this will be deducted from the refund.

You've paid £39 for our best selling item - and tax from your government. Stop being ridiculous - it's your government that charges this. Every country does the exact same thing. Did you get that? It's your government. 

Have you actually never bought something from a country outside the EU before? Every purchase from a non-EU country is taxed by the country it's received into. You're an idiot! 

Further emails will be unread, so don't bother emailing again."

What fees and taxes? Customs and import costs?

He is not wrong! But I agree it should not be said to a customer if you are smart. So he is dumb not rude.

Chessbaron is using cheap and low skill Indian chess makers nowadays and their quality is not as good as before. Besides, Chessbaron is evasive when it comes to customer service and hardly accept responsibility for their product defects.

Bought a 2” board not bad. At the time free shipping and USA addy. As UK is post brexit…

Their shipping details “Why Returns are Possible
Returns of our chess products are possible and simple because all of our chess stock is in the UK. Our chess items are shipped from the UK. The occasional problems that occur with deliveries or with changes of mind on the selection of the chess set are no problem with ChessBaron. Please beware of purchasing chess set products from another country whether through eBay or through a chess retailer in another country. Chess sets from outside the country are liable for tax duty (VAT). When buying chess sets from outside the UK to save a few pennies, duty will be imposed by customs, errors are very difficult to rectify, and hamfisted customs officials may ruin the package. That’s why you should buy chess from us. When buying chess sets from ChessBaron, you are also buying ‘peace of mind”

The last couple sentences seem a little disingenuous. Peace of mind.

I thought this was about me for a moment.

To be honest, it should be the buyers responsibility to be aware of any import / customs fees that may be charged by local government when importing goods into the country.

what is blud waffling about

erm, what the sigma?

It sounds like OP who lives in France got hit with import duties when buying from a UK website and is blaming the retailer.

They helped me out massively recently when one of my electronic chessboards failed when just out of warranty and assisted in getting a replacement.

I couldn't fault their service, to be honest.

Thanks for some good feedback here, and sorry for those who aren't completely happy - we'll try to do better.

Sylvain ordered our best selling item from our UK store, and was charged €10 from his French government for tax. Every country does this. After several insulting emails from him (he hasn't posted these of course), I lost cool and called him what he said I called him. I was wrong, and I'm sorry. It's unprofessional.

He rejected the delivery because of the €10, and now we don't know what will happen. We'll probably have to pay the return costs and maybe the French tax too. When we work that out - we'll refund the rest to him. All for €10, which his government charged him.

Generally we don't worry about such things and just pay the costs and refunds. But Sylvain's emails to us were just awful, and we decided to contest this. Probably unwisely.

Baron

Baron chess several years ago sold some very good quality and unique chess sets of which I have several but back in around 2017 or 2018 Baronchess started introducing a new series of mainly staunton sets which were poorly crafted which seriously in my opinion damaged Chessbaron reputation. It is true that low-skill chess makers charge less for their products but their quality is also poor and this in the long term does more business damage than good!