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The customs charges bit is interesting because I don't really understand where they (as in UPS) stand on this. I'm sure they're adding their own 'convenience'

The customs charges bit is interesting because I don't really understand where they (as in UPS) stand on this. I'm sure they're adding their own 'convenience' fee on top of the actual VAT or whatever they are collecting for the government too - but they don't have a contract with her to do this, so why do they expect her to pay it? The sender is the one who has contracted and paid UPS to deliver the parcel, but if this lady wants nothing to do with it - what are they trying to bill her for? I understand they have paid the government tax on her behalf, but she didn't ask for them to do so. Surely by this logic, anyone in the world could bankrupt anyone else in any country other than their own by mailing a brick that they declare to be worth millions to the unlucky recipient?

jmspring 3y ago
Customs charges are an interesting thing. I had some stuff sent from Amazon US to myself in Finland back in the early 2000s. The package didn't arrive, they sent me another. That one showed up. About a month later, I got a notification from customs wanting duty on the original package. It wasn't much, I ended up with 2x of the items. Called Amazon, told them what was up, and they said just keep it. (Amazon customer service was much different back then). In another instance, I bought an expensive item off EBay from Italy. It was sent, forms had to be filed with FedEx for import, etc. A few month later the Franchise Tax Board in California was all - "hey we want our cut (use tax)". It took a bit of time to track down, but I finally got a hold of a person and pointed out that the purchase was off ebay and sales tax was paid. I had to send the proof so of such. At this point they had already assessed penalties. With the proof it all went away, but the government does want their cut.=
- 0xffff2 3y ago
  I assume in the latter case the item was coming from Italy to you in California, not from Italy to you in Finland? If it was the latter case that would make for a truly bizarre story.
  - jmspring 3y ago
    Yes, sorry it was CA.
- avar 3y ago
  Amazon will still reply "just keep it" and refund you to some return requests. I got that just a few weeks ago when trying to return an item, from an automated system.
  - ornornor 3y ago
    When this happens too many times though you’re flagged as a criminal and amazon will never ever refund anything ever again. Ask me how I know, I lost over 400 EUR this way through no fault of my own and got stuck in an identical and irrelevant copy/paste CS email loop.
    - avar 3y ago
      By "this" do you mean if someone is trying to discover this my "return probing"? I.e. opening return requests after every single purchase in the hopes of getting this response? I can believe that, but I wasn't doing that, I keep most things I buy. I just happened to get this response for an item the other day. FWIW it was a 7 Euro 2 meter long gas hose, the kind you use for a propane tank when camping. I assume the restocking logistics didn't work out for whatever reason. On second thought maybe they've got some hidden policies when it comes to certain products categories. The potential liability of reselling a gas-related product in this price range may not be worth it.
      - ornornor 3y ago
        By “this” I mean refund without return. You can only have so many on your apparently, no matter the reason, before you’re flagged for (seemingly) ever. > The potential liability of reselling a gas-related product in this price range may not be worth it. Maybe. But it’s amazon we’re talking about, they might not care.
everforward 3y ago
The whole thing is weird to me. I would have assumed that COD would require a signature from the recipient as an agreement to accept the charges. It's bizarre that UPS either thinks they can or actually can just drop packages off and presume the recipient agrees to the charges.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  Welcome to Canada! FedEx and DHL does this crap too. A lot of the fee is probably brokerage fees rather than the actual taxes.
balls187 3y ago
In the brick scenario, lets assume I am the brick sender and you are the recipient. You would get a bill, and if you received the package, you could prove that it was a brick, and you didn’t order it, and thus the customs declaration form signed by me was fraudulent and you would not be liable to pay the duties. If the duties were particularly high (enough to bankrupt you) it would be held at the nearest port agreed upon, and you be notified to come pay the duties before it’s delivered. Again thats where you would be able to show it wasn’t an item you wanted. Or you could refuse it all together and it would be up to be me to pay to get it back. If this were a bigger problem the freight carrier would work to identify me and bring charges of committing various fraud. As an aside shipping goods DAP (vs DDP) is risky for this reason—if buyers aren’t made aware if additional shipping costs at time of delivery they may refuse to pay in which case the seller is responsible for paying to get their item back, including additional storage fees.
- EE84M3i 3y ago
  How do you prove you didn't order something?
  - balls187 3y ago
    You don't keep it.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    Sign something under penalty of perjury.
  - epgui 3y ago
    You don't really need to (although as another sibling commenter wrote, you might need a sworn statement or affidavit just establishing that you are claiming not to have ordered the thing). You just need the other party not to be able to prove the contrary. The burden of proof is on them. (IANAL)
    - emmanuel_1234 3y ago
      Something like that actually happened to me: FedEx will not listen to you, not care, not even give you a way to raise such a request. If you persist in not paying, this will be sent to debt collection. If you persist in not paying, your credit score will be affected. There is simply no part of FedEx customer service that would deal with it, or if there is, it's well hidden. Yes you could probably go to court over this, but this is almost certainly not worth the time and money. Source: spent countless hours dealing with this problem in 2023.
dghlsakjg 3y ago
As someone who lives in Canada. You don’t have to pay in this circumstance as far as I can tell. This happened to me with UPS and they sent me to a collection agency who I then asked for proof of the debt. Haven’t heard a peep since. I think if it happens enough, UPS will require prepayment for future packages. You can also refuse delivery. The real scam is the brokerage fees that they tack on to the taxes. For an item worth $40 cad you will end up paying about $20 in brokerage fees on top of taxes for ground packages. The only way to avoid it is to know that the package is coming and clear it yourself before it arrives, which can only be done in person if you aren’t a broker.
- 542458 3y ago
  > which can only be done in person if you aren’t a broker And IIRC there are something less than a couple dozen in-person locations nationwide where you can do so. Many people live hundreds of KMs from the nearest office. It’s infuriating - all you’re doing is filing some paperwork and giving a credit card payment. There’s no reason it couldn’t be done online.
  - rekabis 3y ago
    > there are something less than a couple dozen in-person locations nationwide About ⅔ of Canadians live within 2hrs drive of a Canadian Border Services office. This drops to about 56% of all Canadians if you limit it to a one-hour drive. And there are a recorded 1,200 such manned offices across Canada. Not all of them handle self-clearing, mind you, as some are special-purpose offices that are not accessible to the public at large. But the vast majority do. These CBS offices can be found at any border crossing, international airport, and harbour that has regularly-scheduled dockings of international ships, even cargo ships. There are 117 land border offices, 43 airport offices, and 393 marine offices in Canada alone.
    - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
      Not all Canadians drive! But even so, a 2-hour round-trip drive is a lot of effort to save $20 on brokerage fees.
bradley13 3y ago
This is something I also don't understand. I'm in Switzerland, which is small, so we order a lot from outside the country. All of the bg courier services add a delivery fee - but the seller already paid for shipping? There are a few services (Border Free comes to mind) that work, but otherwise we try to get shipping by the postal system. Germany, of course, has literally outsourced their postal system to DHL :-(
- ffhhttt 3y ago
  But you don’t have to pay import duties and VAT if you buy from EU countries? e.g. these day if I order anything from the UK (to an EU country) the package gets stuck in customs and I have to pay VAT(20%) + Import duty (optional depending on product type/value) + random service fee.
  - ornornor 3y ago
    In CH the first 62.- is free and after that you pay VAT. Which also means that for 5.- VAT they add a racket fee of 20—30.- on top for their efforts.
- ornornor 3y ago
  Yes this is something that infuriated me too. Especially that the “paper pushing fee” is often more than the actual VAT due, and I live 5 min away from the federal customs office. But I checked all I could and in Switzerland you’re not allowed to take the option of clearing the package yourself and so have to pay the courier’s racket. The beauty of it is that how expensive the fee is depends on the level of service the sender picked, and you don’t even know how much the fee will be because they drop the parcel off and send you a bill a couple weeks later. I never order abroad anymore and when I’m forced to, I only do it if they’ll ship through the regular post office as Swiss post is the least predatory in their “handling fees”… but like everything in CH: caveat emptor.
Ekaros 3y ago
Custom charges sound weird. But I take they are not held by customs under chargers are paid like they do here. And at that point she could refuse or point out they are not hers and they would eventually destroy them.
hanche 3y ago
I have my own tale to tell here. A couple years ago, someone got hold of my credit card info and used it to order some expensive clothing from an online store in Italy. If I recall correctly, it was about 1800 euros. It was actually the bank that alerted me, as this was a complete break with my purchase habits. Anyway, I canceled the card, disputed the charges, and got the money back. Several months later I got a letter in the (paper) mail from DHL regarding an unpaid bill for VAT that they had paid on a package I had received from them. Long story short, it turns out the thieves had got the expensive clothes shipped to an address about 500 km from where I live, with my name on it (I live in Norway, BTW). DHL had paid the VAT and delivered the package to “me” somehow. I disputed this, of course, and told them about the credit card issue. After a bit of back and forth, they told me I had to file a police report. I did so, sent them a copy, and they finally relented and did not pursue the issue further. But they also informed me that in the future, if a package came to me, I would have to pay the VAT/customs ahead of receiving the package. Which is fine with me.

jmspring 3y ago

Customs charges are an interesting thing. I had some stuff sent from Amazon US to myself in Finland back in the early 2000s. The package didn't arrive, they sent me another. That one showed up. About a month later, I got a notification from customs wanting duty on the original package. It wasn't much, I ended up with 2x of the items. Called Amazon, told them what was up, and they said just keep it. (Amazon customer service was much different back then). In another instance, I bought an expensive item off EBay from Italy. It was sent, forms had to be filed with FedEx for import, etc. A few month later the Franchise Tax Board in California was all - "hey we want our cut (use tax)". It took a bit of time to track down, but I finally got a hold of a person and pointed out that the purchase was off ebay and sales tax was paid. I had to send the proof so of such. At this point they had already assessed penalties. With the proof it all went away, but the government does want their cut.=

0xffff2 3y ago
I assume in the latter case the item was coming from Italy to you in California, not from Italy to you in Finland? If it was the latter case that would make for a truly bizarre story.
- jmspring 3y ago
  Yes, sorry it was CA.
avar 3y ago
Amazon will still reply "just keep it" and refund you to some return requests. I got that just a few weeks ago when trying to return an item, from an automated system.
- ornornor 3y ago
  When this happens too many times though you’re flagged as a criminal and amazon will never ever refund anything ever again. Ask me how I know, I lost over 400 EUR this way through no fault of my own and got stuck in an identical and irrelevant copy/paste CS email loop.
  - avar 3y ago
    By "this" do you mean if someone is trying to discover this my "return probing"? I.e. opening return requests after every single purchase in the hopes of getting this response? I can believe that, but I wasn't doing that, I keep most things I buy. I just happened to get this response for an item the other day. FWIW it was a 7 Euro 2 meter long gas hose, the kind you use for a propane tank when camping. I assume the restocking logistics didn't work out for whatever reason. On second thought maybe they've got some hidden policies when it comes to certain products categories. The potential liability of reselling a gas-related product in this price range may not be worth it.
    - ornornor 3y ago
      By “this” I mean refund without return. You can only have so many on your apparently, no matter the reason, before you’re flagged for (seemingly) ever. > The potential liability of reselling a gas-related product in this price range may not be worth it. Maybe. But it’s amazon we’re talking about, they might not care.

everforward 3y ago

The whole thing is weird to me. I would have assumed that COD would require a signature from the recipient as an agreement to accept the charges. It's bizarre that UPS either thinks they can or actually can just drop packages off and presume the recipient agrees to the charges.

Scoundreller 3y ago
Welcome to Canada! FedEx and DHL does this crap too. A lot of the fee is probably brokerage fees rather than the actual taxes.

balls187 3y ago

In the brick scenario, lets assume I am the brick sender and you are the recipient. You would get a bill, and if you received the package, you could prove that it was a brick, and you didn’t order it, and thus the customs declaration form signed by me was fraudulent and you would not be liable to pay the duties. If the duties were particularly high (enough to bankrupt you) it would be held at the nearest port agreed upon, and you be notified to come pay the duties before it’s delivered. Again thats where you would be able to show it wasn’t an item you wanted. Or you could refuse it all together and it would be up to be me to pay to get it back. If this were a bigger problem the freight carrier would work to identify me and bring charges of committing various fraud. As an aside shipping goods DAP (vs DDP) is risky for this reason—if buyers aren’t made aware if additional shipping costs at time of delivery they may refuse to pay in which case the seller is responsible for paying to get their item back, including additional storage fees.

EE84M3i 3y ago
How do you prove you didn't order something?
- balls187 3y ago
  You don't keep it.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  Sign something under penalty of perjury.
- epgui 3y ago
  You don't really need to (although as another sibling commenter wrote, you might need a sworn statement or affidavit just establishing that you are claiming not to have ordered the thing). You just need the other party not to be able to prove the contrary. The burden of proof is on them. (IANAL)
  - emmanuel_1234 3y ago
    Something like that actually happened to me: FedEx will not listen to you, not care, not even give you a way to raise such a request. If you persist in not paying, this will be sent to debt collection. If you persist in not paying, your credit score will be affected. There is simply no part of FedEx customer service that would deal with it, or if there is, it's well hidden. Yes you could probably go to court over this, but this is almost certainly not worth the time and money. Source: spent countless hours dealing with this problem in 2023.

dghlsakjg 3y ago

As someone who lives in Canada. You don’t have to pay in this circumstance as far as I can tell. This happened to me with UPS and they sent me to a collection agency who I then asked for proof of the debt. Haven’t heard a peep since. I think if it happens enough, UPS will require prepayment for future packages. You can also refuse delivery. The real scam is the brokerage fees that they tack on to the taxes. For an item worth $40 cad you will end up paying about $20 in brokerage fees on top of taxes for ground packages. The only way to avoid it is to know that the package is coming and clear it yourself before it arrives, which can only be done in person if you aren’t a broker.

542458 3y ago
> which can only be done in person if you aren’t a broker And IIRC there are something less than a couple dozen in-person locations nationwide where you can do so. Many people live hundreds of KMs from the nearest office. It’s infuriating - all you’re doing is filing some paperwork and giving a credit card payment. There’s no reason it couldn’t be done online.
- rekabis 3y ago
  > there are something less than a couple dozen in-person locations nationwide About ⅔ of Canadians live within 2hrs drive of a Canadian Border Services office. This drops to about 56% of all Canadians if you limit it to a one-hour drive. And there are a recorded 1,200 such manned offices across Canada. Not all of them handle self-clearing, mind you, as some are special-purpose offices that are not accessible to the public at large. But the vast majority do. These CBS offices can be found at any border crossing, international airport, and harbour that has regularly-scheduled dockings of international ships, even cargo ships. There are 117 land border offices, 43 airport offices, and 393 marine offices in Canada alone.
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    Not all Canadians drive! But even so, a 2-hour round-trip drive is a lot of effort to save $20 on brokerage fees.

bradley13 3y ago

This is something I also don't understand. I'm in Switzerland, which is small, so we order a lot from outside the country. All of the bg courier services add a delivery fee - but the seller already paid for shipping? There are a few services (Border Free comes to mind) that work, but otherwise we try to get shipping by the postal system. Germany, of course, has literally outsourced their postal system to DHL :-(

ffhhttt 3y ago
But you don’t have to pay import duties and VAT if you buy from EU countries? e.g. these day if I order anything from the UK (to an EU country) the package gets stuck in customs and I have to pay VAT(20%) + Import duty (optional depending on product type/value) + random service fee.
- ornornor 3y ago
  In CH the first 62.- is free and after that you pay VAT. Which also means that for 5.- VAT they add a racket fee of 20—30.- on top for their efforts.
ornornor 3y ago
Yes this is something that infuriated me too. Especially that the “paper pushing fee” is often more than the actual VAT due, and I live 5 min away from the federal customs office. But I checked all I could and in Switzerland you’re not allowed to take the option of clearing the package yourself and so have to pay the courier’s racket. The beauty of it is that how expensive the fee is depends on the level of service the sender picked, and you don’t even know how much the fee will be because they drop the parcel off and send you a bill a couple weeks later. I never order abroad anymore and when I’m forced to, I only do it if they’ll ship through the regular post office as Swiss post is the least predatory in their “handling fees”… but like everything in CH: caveat emptor.

Ekaros 3y ago

Custom charges sound weird. But I take they are not held by customs under chargers are paid like they do here. And at that point she could refuse or point out they are not hers and they would eventually destroy them.

hanche 3y ago

I have my own tale to tell here. A couple years ago, someone got hold of my credit card info and used it to order some expensive clothing from an online store in Italy. If I recall correctly, it was about 1800 euros. It was actually the bank that alerted me, as this was a complete break with my purchase habits. Anyway, I canceled the card, disputed the charges, and got the money back. Several months later I got a letter in the (paper) mail from DHL regarding an unpaid bill for VAT that they had paid on a package I had received from them. Long story short, it turns out the thieves had got the expensive clothes shipped to an address about 500 km from where I live, with my name on it (I live in Norway, BTW). DHL had paid the VAT and delivered the package to “me” somehow. I disputed this, of course, and told them about the credit card issue. After a bit of back and forth, they told me I had to file a police report. I did so, sent them a copy, and they finally relented and did not pursue the issue further. But they also informed me that in the future, if a package came to me, I would have to pay the VAT/customs ahead of receiving the package. Which is fine with me.