I've had a mare these past 2 weeks trying to get spares for a job from Europe, took me a week to get some tools over, in the end I had to pay a man in a van 2.5k to drive from Spain and drop them off.
The funny thing was they sailed through UK customs, it turned out EU customs were being somewhat difficult not letting the tools out the country. All items sent have to be checked at the borders before they leave the EU to the UK, meaning everything is getting checked twice.
As we were hiring the tools the Spanish couldn't understand that we were to be returning them within a set amount of time, the man in the van went through France and when he got to Calais, typical french couldn't be bothered to check paperwork and just waved him straight through. Then flew through UK customs..
It's been tough and has now made us re-think projects when spares are coming from Europe due to the additional time required, meaning we have had to extend lead times and alter customers expectations.