That's no excuse for poor service and not complying with the law. END OF!
If you can't hack it, go and find a 9-5
Keeping Tax Square - employ an accountant. Can't afford it? Stop paying for reviews and facebook likes. Now you can afford it.
Paying Wages - Well if they employed people the phones may get answered so no wages to worry about
Answering emails - Easy to do
Answering the phone - Easy to do
Dealing with suppliers - Why is this difficult
Dealing with couriers - But Ben doesn't deal with couriers, if something goes wrong the customer has to deal with that.
Dealing with customers - They don't seem to do that although this should be the first priority.
Dealing with Forums - Get the point above right and you won't have to deal with forums.
VAT - 5 minute job with any decent accounting package, plus you have an accountant right?
Import Duty - Customers problem according to Ben website
I've no idea about running an importing company or a shop so lets get that straight first but as for running a successful company I know how it works and what cost the most money (which is generally the owners time). My company is in the drilling industry (SW Directional Drilling Ltd, if anyone is interested) so I can only really comment on what we have to do and what I would expect.
People want to better themselves and reap the rewards of owning their own company, in order to do that you have to start somewhere. If an importer (which he seems to be) started off with a legal team, an accountant, web developers, a load of staff, a uk address then he would likely go bust, it's that simple. In order to start off you basically start on your own or with a partner and you handle EVERYTHING yourself, which I imagine is pretty difficult in an unfamiliar country.
Accountants are expensive, very expensive, we turned over approx 90k a month last year, bought a machine for 500k (among other things) and a building for 150k whilst employing 7 staff, so you could say I know what I'm talking about with regards to what things cost. We only use an accountant for the end of year or other things that we are incapable of doing ourselves (which works out far cheaper). I don't agree with the Facebook "likes" paid or not as it would never work for my company, but it is cheap effective marketing (in some cases). Ad-Words works best for us.
VAT is not a 5 minute job, which leads me to believe you have never done it or used an accounts package like sage etc. It's actually far, far quicker to do it with EXCEL but still takes a good two days to do it every 3 month, for us that's only dealing with approx 300 receipts for purchases and approx 10-20 invoices which we have submitted. Most time is taken up with missing receipts, expenses, incorrectly paid invoices, varying VAT rates and the like. A book-keeper can do this cheaper than an accountant but they tend to not have the slightest idea about what your company does and have no interest in your company claiming back as much VAT as possible, which ends up costing more than using an accountant.
E-mails is easy, but try responding to 20 a day when each one takes 10-30 mins to compose.
Phone is also easy, unless 4/5 calls are someone trying to sell you fuel cards, web development, SEO, work wear etc
Suppliers - they get orders wrong, things get lost, held up, need to be collected, delivered to the wrong place
Couriers - We don't use these often but when they pick things up from us they usually get something wrong which results in the loss of 30 mins of my time
Customers - I only have about 20 jobs to look after at any one time and it's difficult enough keeping them happy, I imagine they have a lot more, which with limited staff is not easy.
Forums - This doesn't effect my company as we have a great reputation and are in an extremely niche industry, but for a internet based shop this is crucial I imagine.
Import duty/ tax - It's up to them if they want to leave this to the client, as long as they make it clear which way they are doing it I have no problem. We buy drilling gear from the US and if we get nailed for the duty we pay it, if they add VAT on top we claim it back. If they are cheap and people wan't to roll the dice on the tax then let them do it.
As far as the law goes they're probably just learning as they go along which is how most do it in that industry, I'm not saying that's the right way and if they do it wrong they will likely be punished. My company is still learning now even after 8 years, but as I don't have a law degree I would expect it this way.
One key thing your missing which is more important than anything is time, it's hard fitting everything in unless you have load of staff to hand things over to. If you have loads of staff you have to pay them, margins become tighter so you charge more and clear more stock. Next thing your Jessops and look what happened there.
If you want a response in 5 minutes and pay 30% higher prices and have everything that goes with that then go to Amazon, if you can afford to wait and be messed about a bit to save 30% then take the chance with a HK importer.
I'm not defending them (tip top) as I don't have a clue about them, I'm just defending small companies and not thinking the worst for every possible scenario. Saying that, I didn't want to take the chance with a HK importer (for my 6D purchase) who I didn't know (tax and customs etc) but a friend recommended Kerso so I did that instead, which is probably something in the middle of the two with a good reputation.
Your customers put the bread on the table even if they do not open the box at the right end! 
