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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 s
by 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 agoI 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 agoYes, sorry it was CA.
- avar 3y agoAmazon 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 agoWhen 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 agoBy "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 agoBy “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.