@goodthingsforsalerobert wrote:the buyer said i should have been aware for the duty charge and should have let them know
They got that totally the wrong way around. 
It is the buyer's responsibility to know what their local taxes and custom charges are, and is their responsibility to pay for it - they can not hold a seller respnsibile because they were unaware of their own country's import charges, and/or their refusal to pay for them. If they don't want to pay taxes on imports, they need to buy from the EU.
I have in my policies elsewhere that if a package is returned to me due to refusal to pay customs fees, the only thing that is refunded is item price, and not until I receive it back. Unfortunately earlier this year I had someone (also from the UK) simply tell me the item didn't arrive - I actually paid $25 to resend it with full tracking, that got there without a problem, then about 3 months after I sent the first one, it came back to me with stickers over it showing the customer just refused to pay the duties.
Sadly, this kind of thing happens all the time with UK buyers because their threshold is so low, the admin charges so high (8 GBP on top of the taxes etc) and according to many in the UK, it's not made widely known over there, plus it doesn't apply to orders within the EU so buyers can buy from a lot of different countries before they git hit with a notice to pay import charges, so heaps of people are surprised (and angry at sellers) when it occurs.
Not that that is any excuse, the first point is the main point - it is the buyer's responsibility, no matter which way you look at it.
Show them this, from eBay's Money Back Guarantee policy:
Generally, the buyer is responsible for accepting the item when it arrives. If the buyer refuses delivery, their claim is not eligible for eBay Money Back Guarantee.
http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/policies/money-back-guarantee.html
Refusing to pay customs charges = refusing delivery.
