Also, I think the flipside of terrible fees importing from the EU is that there's no fee for goods from the states under £135. I'm sure it used to be around the £20 mark before you'd come home to a grey 'There's a Fee to Pay' card from Royal Mail.
It does influence my decision to buy - quite a lot. Never liked paying a premium on top of a premium.
I think the "customs duty of 36 GBP" is nonsense for a 40 euro order.
The rules are the same for EU and USA, both are now "rest of the world".
There are three categories of "fees" that may or may not apply.
The first is VAT; that should be paid on everything. This was the most common cause of the "Fee to Pay" card. There used to be an exemption for under £15, but that's no longer. This should be actually now collected by the seller, even if they're outside of the UK. Big companies do this (ebay, ali,etsy,...), the smaller ones sometimes get away with not doing this yet. I think the setup also means that VAT is no longer collected via the annoying "Fee to Pay" cards, and if your parcel gets through Customs, then you're fine unless you need to pay any of the following:
The second is duty. Exempt for < £135.
The third is excise. That's for alcohol and tobacco only. This may apply if you have alcohol in an aftershave, I'm not sure.
So - $7 for shipping from the States and no VAT collected is a great deal, but it also means that the seller just ignores the current UK rules. It remains to be seen for how long the UK Customs will let this slide.