14 ms·

When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

320 points by goldenskye 11mo ago

dcrazy 11mo ago
I guess we can’t know precisely how this happened without seeing UPS’s original Form 7501. The amended one sounds strange. Why did they claim that the duty for the actual HTS code is $0, and attribute the entirety of the tariff to the special EU-origin code?
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
gishh 11mo ago
[flagged]
- dcrazy 11mo ago
  It’s useful background if you don’t understand how paying tariffs works for small individual shipments. This is something most Americans who buy stuff from abroad haven’t had to deal with until the ending of de minimis.
- jeromegv 11mo ago
  While tariffs aren't a secret, they are a new reality for majority of americans. They never had to bother with any of that before they ended De Minimis, now every single package must go through a complicated import process and if you are somewhat inexperienced with it (as most people do), you might end up with UPS screwing up the paperwork and charging you wrongly hundreds of dollars. That's ultimately what the US citizens voted for and I think that's important they know what they are dealing with.
  - jleyank 11mo ago
    The annoying thing about this setup is that people outside the us pay tariffs going both ways. They must pay the us tariffs to send into the us and then they must pay their countries tariffs receiving goods coming from the us. I read that the EU is ending de minimus in 2026. This is going to really put a hurt on small businesses like crafters, used bookstores, antique dealers, … Yeah, it’s what they voted for, but having the world get into the tariff act is a real pain.
    - tombert 11mo ago
      I still find it baffling that Trump managed to convince people that, somehow, "China" is paying these tariffs, despite the fact that that makes no fucking sense. These companies in China aren't charities; even if the exporter were the ones directly paying the tariffs, it would simply be baked into the price of the good being sold. This really isn't hard. It's literally something I learned on the first day of high school economics.
      - topato 11mo ago
        Its scary how many things Trump says, claims that are roughly equivalent to, "1 + 2 = 4", which people just eat up as truth! It feels like all the deficets in our education system (going back decades) are finally coming to roost... so many people lack critical thinking skills and media savvy/awareness. I think its too late to fix it, now that a sufficient majority of people are susceptible to this deception, and a sufficient chunk of politicians are willing to deceive them... there is too much motivation to keep them dumb. The hatred towards the "Intellectual Elite" is scary, and really is reminicent of Pol Pot.
        tombert 11mo ago
        It reminds me more of the Cultural Revolution than anything.
        CamperBob2 11mo ago
        Education isn't the problem with Trump voters, stupidity is. Remember that this is his second term. Every American voter had the benefit of four years of "education" regarding Trump's character and competence. A majority of them responded by freely and enthusiastically demanding four more such years.
- anigbrowl 11mo ago
  If it had been just the last paragraph you'd be (rightly) complaining that there wasn't enough context to evaluate the claim in the headline.
- ProAm 11mo ago
  Similar to this comment. Just stop after the first 9 words.
  - gishh 11mo ago
    You’re so clever lmao
- epistasis 11mo ago
  Just because you don't like the conclusions that come from the stories of average people, doesn't mean that others do not want to hear those same stories.
- Aurornis 11mo ago
  The tariffs and enforcement policies have been changing rapidly with little notice. This has been terrible for anyone who has to deal with slow shipments from other countries. When things were changing rapidly you could place an order and by the time it arrive the tariff could be something entirely different. It was awful. I know a lot of people who carefully calculated expected tariffs on a purchase and then got smacked with a much larger number later when it arrived. There has also been chaos in trying to remediate tariff mistakes. If you got charged the wrong amount, good luck contacting anyone to get it fixed. They’re so slammed with communications and complaints that it’s just not happening. So this snide dismissiveness is just wrong.
  - renewiltord 11mo ago
    One company I contracted with had a few TEUs that they just decided they didn't want to import (some branded boxes, double-walled bottles) after they were in flight. The lead time was a few months on what they wanted and after they'd ordered but before the containers arrived the tariffs went into place. I haven't talked to them in months, but I wonder what happens there. Do you just let the product sit in a shipyard somewhere? Surely you have to pay for storage like the guy in the OP. But then what? What if you just don't pay it at all? They were definitely the kind of people to just be like "fuck it, your cargo containers now". What I learned from them was that very often if you don't like what someone is charging you, you can just not pay them anything and let them keep whatever of yours they have (which they can't really do anything with). I keep thinking that some place has to have a lien against the company in some way, but in practice they just take whatever they've got and leave. I'd never have the balls to try, myself.
JSR_FDED 11mo ago
Tariffs are great. They protect the struggling domestic IT industry and gives it time to ramp up its production of vintage computer parts.
- oarla 11mo ago
  True, but does not help in this case with vintage parts.
  - glitchc 11mo ago
    I believe the OP was attempting humour.
    - oarla 11mo ago
      Yes. Pitfall of not reading the entire comment before responding.
  - robrain 11mo ago
    Please engage sarcasm-awareness mode.
    - dullcrisp 11mo ago
      Neither humans nor LLMs are currently equipped with separate sarcasm-awareness modes so telling someone to engage theirs can only be…ohh
      - xxs 11mo ago
        that's so beyond obviously a sarcastic remark. In that regard I'd consider a vast majority of the humans totally capable of detecting dead pan sarcasm both in spoken and written speech.
        nandomrumber 11mo ago
        Isn’t there a well known internet adage that speaks to this? Do you remember what it is?
mrtksn 11mo ago
Ah this is just another step towards Turkification[0] of USA. This situation is just how it is in Erdogan's Turkey but you still have way to go if you are able to get your package out of the customs in less than a few weeks and no hustle. When the trade deals and tariff conditions get sufficiently complex(it gets more complex every day as the president accommodates specific companies and personal favors), the bureaucracy also increases so at some point it becomes too much of a nuisance to bother with individual imports. [0] https://www.theglobalist.com/the-turkification-of-america-trump-erdogan/ https://www.theglobalist.com/the-turkification-of-america-tr...
- aranelsurion 11mo ago
  It’s still a little hard to believe and terrifying how similar this particular title and the comments below are to what I would’ve read in Turkish forums circa 2010s. For Turkey it only got worse from there.
  - chrneu 11mo ago
    yeah this is just a way for republicans to curry favors/influence from businesses they prefer. they make everything as hard as possible, then create loopholes for their buddies. this is what they've been claiming has been happening under democrats(projection), but in reality it's teh system they long for. Now that they're in power they can make it happen.
al_borland 11mo ago
I had this happen with FedEx. They released the package and delivered it without me paying. I submitted a dispute, which they say could take up to 6 months to process. I hate having this hang over my head, as I don’t want anything going to collections, but figured if I paid it I would have a harder time getting my money back. Mine was for a watch I got serviced. My own watch that I shipped out being returned to me… not a new import. If I end up having to pay what FedEx is saying I owe, it would have been cheaper for me to buy a new watch than to get it serviced, which is very upsetting. The whole process has been a horrible experience from the very start and I regret the entire thing. I should have just risked getting it serviced locally… or not done it at all.
- Animats 11mo ago
  There's something called a "carnet" for that case.[1] When something is leaving the country temporarily but coming back, there's a way to register that. This comes up a lot if you're doing trade shows or performances. [1] https://www.cbp.gov/trade/programs-administration/entry-summary/ata-carnet-faqs https://www.cbp.gov/trade/programs-administration/entry-summ...
  - atomicthumbs 11mo ago
    better not use UPS; goods moving under ATA carnet are on their prohibited list
  - IIsi50MHz 11mo ago
    At work, when we send stuff From USA to Canada for repair, we just need to put the correct Canadian customs code and "For warranty repair" on the packing slip.
- rixed 11mo ago
  > I should have just risked getting it serviced locally… Sounds like tariffs working as intended?
  - al_borland 11mo ago
IncandescentGas 11mo ago
I just got an invoice from ups to pay a $16 brokerage fee to jpmorgan for collecting a $0.60 tariff on a sticker included in a box with a custom keyboard shipped from Taiwan. Seems like wall street is making out better than the US on this arrangement
- dependency_2x 11mo ago
  Please blog about this!
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- axiolite 11mo ago
  Yeah, I noped-out when I saw eBay's writeup on tariffs owed by the buyer (not paid by the seller): "Shipping carriers or US Customs usually charge $5–$30 in processing fees. Add the item price, import fees, and processing fees to estimate your final cost." https://pages.ebay.com/tariffs/ https://pages.ebay.com/tariffs/ Not something I'm doing for a $5 item... I'll sit back and wait until the Supreme Court finds the tariffs are illegal, and the Fed has to pay every cent back to the businesses, suddenly sending the US spiraling into the biggest budget deficit in history.
  - lostlogin 11mo ago
    How would this ever work? The vast bulk of tariffs are surely paid by the buyer, not the seller.
    - tjbiddle 11mo ago
      It's more nuanced than that. Tariffs do not always 100% immediately get passed on to buyer. If there's a $100 product you'd like to purchase and there's a 100% tariff, it won't be $200. That product was made abroad, let's for $20. So the tariff should be $20, not $100. The US-based owner will go to the supplier, say they're getting squeezed by tariffs and first they'll try to see what they can do to recategorize the tariff, or negotiate with their supplier to absorb some of the expense. Let's say that got it down to $15. The owner still doesn't want to increase costs by 15%, so they'll hold off for a while and absorb, and then eventually maybe increase 5-10 and absorb further; perhaps eventually going the full stretch - maybe not.
delichon 11mo ago
If SCOTUS finds the tariffs unconstitutional in Learning Resources v. Trump, they should order refunds.
- femiagbabiaka 11mo ago
  I would be surprised if the money was being held in escrow and could be refunded. Actually the Trump admin is using this as an argument to the SC as to why making the tariffs unconstitutional is a bad idea.
  - Coffeewine 11mo ago
    Indeed. The moral of the story is that it’s ideal to do illegal acts which are difficult to undo, as it’ll give the judiciary greater pause.
    - chrneu 11mo ago
      This reminds me of the quote If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem. Kind of the same idea, sorta.
- testing22321 11mo ago
  According to the President, tariffs have already brought in $8 TRILLION dollars. [1] Might be hard to issue refunds. 1. https://reason.com/2025/09/02/the-white-house-says-trumps-tariffs-have-raised-8-trillion-in-revenue-thats-not-even-close/ https://reason.com/2025/09/02/the-white-house-says-trumps-ta...
- ryanSrich 11mo ago
  Because I've ran into the same issue. I don't think this is actually the tariff. I'm almost 100% positive this is the shipping companies (UPS, and FedEx, but UPS seems to be the biggest culprit) are slamming receivers with massive bills because they are miscategorizing many items coming from Europe.
celeritascelery 11mo ago
I had this happen to me on an order from Sweden. The order was about $450 + $50 shipping. I used an online tariff calculator and it said it should be 15%. So I was expecting ~$70. A few days before it is supposed to arrive UPS sends me a $242 bill for “tariffs, customs, and brokerage fees”. That basically made it 50% more expensive, but it was either pay it or loose the item. A month later they sent me an invoice that claimed the item cost $850. No idea how that happened. I am too scared to order anything from the EU anymore.
- rabf 11mo ago
  Its funny how little US citizens know about this, meanwhile in the rest of the world we have been paying import duties our entire lives. When an item is posted abroad forms have to be filled detailing the sender, the nature of the goods and the value. Some sellers willl bend the law for you and decalre the value of the goods to be lower than what you actually paid if you ask nicely. The main danger being that if the parcel is lost the sender will lose out on any insurance claim. The other option is to prepay tarrifs during the purchase of an item. Fedex and DHL usually offer this service which includes epedited customs clearance.
  - celeritascelery 11mo ago
    I would have just been happy if the declared value was what I paid, instead of almost double.
  - Terr_ 11mo ago
    > Its funny how little US citizens know about this Is it really? It sounds like you're implying it's some kind of woeful ignorance, but I say it's perfectly reasonable: 1. Each US state is already in a open-borders zero-tariff framework with all other states, which covers a very large portion of what people purchase. 2. Until recently, most individual consumers didn't need to think about tariffs on international goods, since most purchases were <$800 and covered by the de minimis rule. (Which AFAICT was in place for ~80 years.)
    - 11mo ago
michaelteter 11mo ago
Never fear! That $2000 check will be coming your way soon.
- Terr_ 11mo ago
  And all it cost was a mere $4,900 stealthily taken from your pocket—what a steal! https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-april-15-2025 https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-april-1...
- chrneu 11mo ago
  Lol the mental gymnastics of republicans to say "Tariffs aren't taxes on citizens, they're taxes on foreign countries" and now trump is easing tariffs on foods because they're too expensive. he's also thinking of shipping out STIMULUS CHECKS because people are struggling to buy tariffed goods. it's mind boggling what they must be thinking to justify this stuff.
  - mrbombastic 11mo ago
    True freedom is letting your beliefs float to support whatever the fuck you feel like doing that day
eqvinox 11mo ago
In Germany, you can pre-register with DHL Express¹ with a bank account and optionally an EORI (Economic operators registration and identification) number, and then they immediately ding your bank account instead of providing their "disbursement service" where they 'benevolently' loan the customs fee to you for a 'minor' fee. I've not found similar options elsewhere, though I would assume they exist but might be corporate-only. ¹ annoyingly enough this doesn't even work with DHL, which is a separate thing from DHL Express in Germany.
- exmadscientist 11mo ago
  This is how it works here in the US as well. If you are using FedEx or UPS for cross-border express shipments, you need to open an account with them and have a credit card on file (or whatever). Then they will deliver first and bill you later, instead of the other way around without an account. This really does make a difference!
zdc1 11mo ago
Government insanity aside, the most insane part to me is that card networks allow partial refunds, but UPS wants to... mail a cheque?
- c0balt 11mo ago
  Maybe they want to play a similar game to mail-in rebates? Or it could just be an old process that has yet to be modernized
- Maxion 11mo ago
  They probably have this type of cash in some short term investment vechicle to earn extra cash, so they have to hold on to it for an average of n days. Writing a cheque and mailing it basically gives them quite a few more extra days of interest payments.
epolanski 11mo ago
As an European, I'm kinda pissed we don't retaliate the duties. I'd rather take a financial hit than act so weak and passive. I swear between chat control, selling out EU's privacy to US tech companies (you can check how many times Palantir & others met commission members, it's public), the insanity of the ICE ban and this tariffs passivity I'm very unhappy. Also, it's too convenient to only focus on material goods when the biggest US exports are gazillions in financial and IT services.
- bruce511 11mo ago
  Leaving aside the other (valid) items in your list, reciprocal tarifs really aren't helpful. Firstly, they're unnecessary. Just do what Canadians are doing. Stop buying US goods. Stop going to the US on holiday. Shop keepers get the hint real quick. Secondly, they just make goods more expensive for you. They gave no impact on American producers. So it may feel like the EU is doing nothing. But really, there's nothing they need to do. Tarifs are a tax levied by the US govt on US citizens. Sure demand might drop a bit in the short term, but that just drives producers to find other markets. Which in the long run is a good thing.
  - Spivak 11mo ago
    > Stop buying US goods. If only there was a way to make US goods more expensive to discourage their purchase :P
    - bruce511 11mo ago
      Sure, that's one way to approach it. But I feel like the Canadian approach is better. You don't need to coerce fellow citizens, indeed the point is far more effective when it's not coerced. And if not enough citizens care to make the point, then they're also not going to thank you for rising prices.
  - epolanski 11mo ago
    > Leaving aside the other (valid) items in your list, reciprocal tarifs really aren't helpful. You have completely missed my point: I don't care about them being helpful or not. It's not about the financial but political aspect.
fzeroracer 11mo ago
I had to pay a tariff charge of about $20 on an order of about $100 that I had placed about a year or so prior to this whole tariff bullshit. The idea that the president can decide to tariff whatever the fuck he wants is something that needs to go, since it's essentially levying taxes without representation. If somehow the current admin can't refund the money they stole from people then every single person involved should be thrown in jail and their property confiscated until that money is recovered.
- lostlogin 11mo ago
  Imagine how non Americans feel about Trump. He is fucking with the worlds economy nearly as much as he is messing up the US economy, yet we get even less representation. Retroactive taxes are clearly bs.
- tasty_freeze 11mo ago
  I bought a semi-custom instrument from Germany back in the spring of 2024, about $1800 (a Sandberg electric bass). But there was a year-long back log. The timing was perfect -- they told me it was ready to ship just when the tariffs went into effect, which cost me an extra $250 or so.
ryanSrich 11mo ago
I also imported a roughly $400 item from Romania. Was expecting a 30% tariff at most. Nope. $756. Sender says there is nothing they can do. UPS says that's the money I owe. They will send to collections if you go long enough without paying it. Reddit had no answers, and many are struggling with the same situation.
- inferiorhuman 11mo ago
  And now you know why DHL suspended shipments to the US for a bit. I think express (non-postal) shipments are being processed these days?
nielsbot 11mo ago
If (when) SCOTUS determines that Trump's tariffs were illegally collected and importers are refunded, will end consumers who paid tariffs also be refunded?
- chrneu 11mo ago
  nobody has any idea and you best bet trump is going to hold onto that money until it goes to the supreme court.
  - matwood 11mo ago
    They are already making noise that it would be too hard to issue refunds, ie 'can't unscramble an egg'. So even when tariffs get ruled against, refunds may take years to get. People buying tariff refund claims are still only paying ~.25 on the dollar. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-street-tariff-trades-show-113000327.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-street-tariff-trades-sho...
    - nielsbot 11mo ago
      Yup--I linked an article about that in my other comment https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lutnick-family-angling-to-make-astronomical-sums-off-court-nixing-tariffs https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lutnick-family-angling-... The corruption is off the charts.
nielsbot 11mo ago
> Lutnick Family Angling To Make Astronomical Sums Off Court Nixing Tariffs https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lutnick-family-angling-to-make-astronomical-sums-off-court-nixing-tariffs https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lutnick-family-angling-...
maguay 11mo ago
And herein lies the rub: It's been like this in many countries for the longest time. In Thailand, say, you receive an order from abroad, the post office sends you a slip and you have to pay the assessed duties to receive the package. It often ends up feeing arbitrary; some stuff comes through, others get assessed at a higher value and you have to show receipts and convince them that no, this isn't that expensive of an item. The officially published rate of X matters little when the assessed value is up to an overworked official (in the most generous of readings of the situation). Nothing's exempt; somehow gifts from family and used items always seem most likely to trigger the tripwire. Ship something through DHL or a similar service, and they follow the letter of the law so you'll both end up paying the official duty (at least there, it's almost guaranteed to follow the declared value) plus their processing fee, storage fee, and whatever else they include. I've easily paid double the price of a product for all of those fees together. And worst, it's all unpredictable. At least if there's a 10% sales tax you can calculate that into if you want to buy an item. But once you get hit enough times, you start just not feeling like it's worth the mental load, time, and random financial hit to order stuff. America had no idea how good they had it, in the before times.
- chrneu 11mo ago
  >America had no idea how good they had it, in the before times. The downside is the insane consumption associated with that. Americans are responsible for an insane amount of pollution, far more per capita than any other people in the history of the world, much of which is tied to how easy/cheap it is to order shit we don't need. So, good if ya wanna buy cheap pollution, pretty bad if ya care about the next generation.
  - themafia 11mo ago
    > Americans are responsible for an insane amount of pollution So does Canada. > far more per capita than any other people in the history of the world Not even remotely close to true. Aside from that it's down 20% from it's peak 40 (!) years ago. > much of which is tied to how easy/cheap it is to order shit we don't need. The data does not support this conclusion. > pretty bad if ya care about the next generation. Speaking of trends.. care to guess which country has doubled it's pollution in the last 10 years?
batch12 11mo ago
Sounds like something that could be weaponized. Order a bunch of 'gifts' to be shipped to a target via UPS/FedEx or whichever vendor helpfully pays the tarrifs for you. Then your victim has to fight collections or pay up.
refulgentis 11mo ago
UPS didn't charge it.
CGMthrowaway 11mo ago
Somewhat clickbait. The $684 duty charge was in error, and they got it reduced to the correct amount (an order of magnitude lower)
- adrian_b 11mo ago
  Not a clickbait, because it was quite difficult to get it reduced, so it is good to know how to do it. Moreover, the money have not been returned yet, that could take a long time and for many people losing access to such an amount would be very inconvenient, even if they knew that the money would be returned, eventually.
  - CGMthrowaway 11mo ago
    It's definitely good to know how to do it. This guy shares his anecdote and it's worth pointing out while UPS made an error there is plenty of responsibility that can be taken by the buyer and seller when importing. Don't put your life and finances in the hands of someone else like a chump if you can avoid it. The buyer can request/urge the seller to properly declare items (e.g. as used vintage computer parts), and the seller can declare items and prices clearly. The buyer can also pre-clear with customs (this is more advanced, level 2, but Customs has been investing a lot into making pre-clear process easy and useful)
jonathanlydall 11mo ago
In the country where I live, these kinds of fees are generally referred to "import taxes", because it's the buyer who's having to pay extra money which is going to the tax authority, not the seller. While they can have an effect of encouraging domestic production, mostly they're a way to extract more money from the population.
- Fabricio20 11mo ago
  Hello fellow Brazilian! We cry in 200-300% on top of shipping costs.
  - forinti 11mo ago
    That's just not true. It's 60% and 20% for items below US$50. You could theoretically get charged over 100% the price of the product if you buy something really cheap and shipping is more expensive than the product because shipping is taxed too.
  - jonathanlydall 11mo ago
    South African actually, but fellow BRICSian I guess.
anonymousiam 11mo ago
UPS sucks today. I've had a UPS business account for over 35 years. In the past year or so they've become just terrible. Any call you make to them will have a hold time of at least half an hour. Many of my calls have gone over an hour. Usually you'll get transferred at least once. Also, earlier this year they outsourced their billing services to a third party, requiring additional consent on their website, and billing calls are now answered by an overseas call center. I had to call them several times a few months back. What triggered everything was a fraudulent shipment made using my UPS account. I thought that I got that straightened out after two calls lasting about 2.5 hours total. I got another bill the next month for the same fraudulent shipment where even though my shipping costs had been refunded, UPS was charging me a "missing PLD fee" because the criminals who shipped using my account number did not create the shipment using my online account. So after another 1.5 hours or so, that got resolved too. (They don't seem to offer an option to prevent shipments from being initiated from anywhere other than the online account.) While waiting on hold (both times), their pre-recorded on-hold content would urge me to user their webiste to resolve my issue, which I had already tried, and discovered that it was impossible. I had to call them one more time the following month because they began charging me $20 per month for no apparent reason. Without first notifying me, they decided that all direct bill accounts would now be charged this monthly fee. I was able to update my account with a credit card on file to get them to stop doing this. I would switch to FedEx, but their customer service is even worse. I closed my FedEx account 20 years ago, but I continued to receive spam from them for over 15 years with no way to opt out (because of the existing customer relationship that no longer existed).
- chrneu 11mo ago
  Didn't UPS try to move away from union labor a few years ago after a strike? I wonder if this has anything to do with that.
- 15155 11mo ago
  > UPS business account > What triggered everything was a fraudulent shipment made using my UPS account If your business allows for it, set your account to "Deny Inbound Charges" at https://www.ups.com/vip/view https://www.ups.com/vip/view UPS is still probably the best domestically for ground shipping, FedEx is the best domestically for express parcels, and DHL is the best for inbound or outbound international without question.
tony69 11mo ago
Our business got charged a 200% tariff on a UPS import from Japan, completely incorrect. The dispute is taking much longer than OP’s. Either UPS doesn’t know what they’re doing, or they willfully charge higher fees, or maybe they’re just understaffed from the massive layoffs they did to try to save their stock price. edit: as a biz you (we) should use a legit import broker instead of UPS. But individuals like OP are stuck with no option.
gwittel 11mo ago
I’ve had a similar thing happen to me recently. 500$ tariff on $130 of stuff. The tariff should have been like $20. UPS has been completely non responsive and still won’t show me the customs forms. Total scam.
peteforde 11mo ago
I hate UPS with the passion of a thousand dying suns. I've long since opted to pay more to use DHL whenever I can, but a lot of Chinese suppliers simply won't deal with anyone except UPS. Drives me nuts.
Hobadee 11mo ago
At least this guy got the option to know what was happening. A few years ago I randomly got a letter from the IRS (or some other 3-letter agency - I can't recall which) demanding I pay thousands of dollars because I imported "industrial equipment". I found this odd as I'm just a normal consumer who buys crap of Amazon and whatnot - I'm not importing tens of thousands of dollars worth of industrial equipment. I verified everything and it wasn't a scam; the government was legitimately about to take me to court or start garnishing my wages or something like that. They said that UPS or FedEx had told them I imported the equipment but never paid import duties. I got ahold of the case worker for my case and told them it must be some error. After a week or two of back and forth, we finally figured out that it was for a laptop that a user in Canada had shipped back to me when they left the company, and it had been mis-categorized and valued on the import documents. Since we had purchased the laptop in the US in the first place and shipped it to the user, the case was dismissed and I didn't have to pay anything, but it's always a mini heart attack when you get a letter from Uncle Sam saying you owe thousands.
- temptemptemp111 11mo ago
  [dead]
blackhaj7 11mo ago
I got charged a $17 tariff on a doll my stepmum had knitted my daughter. Fun fun
epaga 11mo ago
I live in Germany and UPS is asking for 116€ customs / fees for a personal gift package someone sent me worth $47 (40€ which is below the new 45€ de minimis line). Nearly everything in the blog post happened to me just this past week except I didn't have 116€ at home in cash(!) so they will be delivering on Monday (when I will have cash and then try to get it all back from UPS). The whole thing is unbelievably infuriating and insane and I will warn anyone in the States to never again use UPS for shipping abroad.
rkagerer 11mo ago
Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum, which required me to fill out a UPS-specific form attesting to the steel and aluminum content I ordered a specialty lock and some keys valued at about $400, and paid an extra $400 in duties because of this. It's insane. Plot twist: I'm in Canada and was ordering a made-in-USA product from a US vendor. The duties were due to matching countertartiffs at the time. Sorry, but that's the last lock I buy from the US (and maybe the last thing with metal in it if I can help it) until this mess is resolved.
- bombcar 11mo ago
  At those prices it’d be cheaper to fly to the US and walk up to the company and buy it and fly back.
  - testing22321 11mo ago
    For many years it was cheaper to fly to the US, buy a MacBookPro and fly back to Australia than it was to buy one in Australia.
thrw888 11mo ago
This was before current administration. FedEx charged me $60 AFTER delivery of $30 hat gifted to me from my US peers (yep, no warning, I got an email that I owe them $60 a few days after parcel was delivered). I originally thought it's a scam, but it was not. I diaputed this stating I should be informed BEFORE, not after delivery. After 6 months of back and forth I found that it's actually EU tarrifs.
- bombcar 11mo ago
  The secret to international shipments is to ALWAYS demand it be sent by the government postal service. You might still get hit with tariffs but you won’t get hit with insane brokerage fees.
accrual 11mo ago
Also a vintage PC enthusiast. I have completely stopped buying parts from overseas due to this issue. $60 for an old GPU + $Shipping + $ADMIN_FEE? No thanks.
msephton 11mo ago
UPS also tried this with me on a competition prize I won from Atari. I'm not paying to receive a mystery prize box. Thankfully I queried it and Atari stepped up and agreed to reimburse the fees, at which point I paid them to UPS. And that was shipping from United States to England, United Kingdom!
lunias 11mo ago
I live in the US and order a decent amount of things from overseas... I got hit with tariffs once by UPS when ordering some clothes from Germany. They wanted 44% of the total value of goods in government / brokerage charges. It's pretty clear that UPS is scamming people and hoping they don't fight the obscene charges. That being said, I hit pause on ordering from overseas. I don't want to deal with such terrible transparency in what I will be charged.
faefox 11mo ago
This is your daily reminder that tariffs are a tax on American consumers and are NOT paid by the country the tariffs are imposed on, no matter how desperately the current administration might try to convince you otherwise.
stefaniedaene 11mo ago
[dead]

320 points by goldenskye 11mo ago

dcrazy 11mo ago

I guess we can’t know precisely how this happened without seeing UPS’s original Form 7501. The amended one sounds strange. Why did they claim that the duty for the actual HTS code is $0, and attribute the entirety of the tariff to the special EU-origin code?

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

gishh 11mo ago

[flagged]

dcrazy 11mo ago
It’s useful background if you don’t understand how paying tariffs works for small individual shipments. This is something most Americans who buy stuff from abroad haven’t had to deal with until the ending of de minimis.
jeromegv 11mo ago
While tariffs aren't a secret, they are a new reality for majority of americans. They never had to bother with any of that before they ended De Minimis, now every single package must go through a complicated import process and if you are somewhat inexperienced with it (as most people do), you might end up with UPS screwing up the paperwork and charging you wrongly hundreds of dollars. That's ultimately what the US citizens voted for and I think that's important they know what they are dealing with.
- jleyank 11mo ago
  The annoying thing about this setup is that people outside the us pay tariffs going both ways. They must pay the us tariffs to send into the us and then they must pay their countries tariffs receiving goods coming from the us. I read that the EU is ending de minimus in 2026. This is going to really put a hurt on small businesses like crafters, used bookstores, antique dealers, … Yeah, it’s what they voted for, but having the world get into the tariff act is a real pain.
  - tombert 11mo ago
    I still find it baffling that Trump managed to convince people that, somehow, "China" is paying these tariffs, despite the fact that that makes no fucking sense. These companies in China aren't charities; even if the exporter were the ones directly paying the tariffs, it would simply be baked into the price of the good being sold. This really isn't hard. It's literally something I learned on the first day of high school economics.
    - topato 11mo ago
      Its scary how many things Trump says, claims that are roughly equivalent to, "1 + 2 = 4", which people just eat up as truth! It feels like all the deficets in our education system (going back decades) are finally coming to roost... so many people lack critical thinking skills and media savvy/awareness. I think its too late to fix it, now that a sufficient majority of people are susceptible to this deception, and a sufficient chunk of politicians are willing to deceive them... there is too much motivation to keep them dumb. The hatred towards the "Intellectual Elite" is scary, and really is reminicent of Pol Pot.
      - tombert 11mo ago
        It reminds me more of the Cultural Revolution than anything.
      - CamperBob2 11mo ago
        Education isn't the problem with Trump voters, stupidity is. Remember that this is his second term. Every American voter had the benefit of four years of "education" regarding Trump's character and competence. A majority of them responded by freely and enthusiastically demanding four more such years.
anigbrowl 11mo ago
If it had been just the last paragraph you'd be (rightly) complaining that there wasn't enough context to evaluate the claim in the headline.
ProAm 11mo ago
Similar to this comment. Just stop after the first 9 words.
- gishh 11mo ago
  You’re so clever lmao
epistasis 11mo ago
Just because you don't like the conclusions that come from the stories of average people, doesn't mean that others do not want to hear those same stories.
Aurornis 11mo ago
The tariffs and enforcement policies have been changing rapidly with little notice. This has been terrible for anyone who has to deal with slow shipments from other countries. When things were changing rapidly you could place an order and by the time it arrive the tariff could be something entirely different. It was awful. I know a lot of people who carefully calculated expected tariffs on a purchase and then got smacked with a much larger number later when it arrived. There has also been chaos in trying to remediate tariff mistakes. If you got charged the wrong amount, good luck contacting anyone to get it fixed. They’re so slammed with communications and complaints that it’s just not happening. So this snide dismissiveness is just wrong.
- renewiltord 11mo ago
  One company I contracted with had a few TEUs that they just decided they didn't want to import (some branded boxes, double-walled bottles) after they were in flight. The lead time was a few months on what they wanted and after they'd ordered but before the containers arrived the tariffs went into place. I haven't talked to them in months, but I wonder what happens there. Do you just let the product sit in a shipyard somewhere? Surely you have to pay for storage like the guy in the OP. But then what? What if you just don't pay it at all? They were definitely the kind of people to just be like "fuck it, your cargo containers now". What I learned from them was that very often if you don't like what someone is charging you, you can just not pay them anything and let them keep whatever of yours they have (which they can't really do anything with). I keep thinking that some place has to have a lien against the company in some way, but in practice they just take whatever they've got and leave. I'd never have the balls to try, myself.

JSR_FDED 11mo ago

Tariffs are great. They protect the struggling domestic IT industry and gives it time to ramp up its production of vintage computer parts.

oarla 11mo ago
True, but does not help in this case with vintage parts.
- glitchc 11mo ago
  I believe the OP was attempting humour.
  - oarla 11mo ago
    Yes. Pitfall of not reading the entire comment before responding.
- robrain 11mo ago
  Please engage sarcasm-awareness mode.
  - dullcrisp 11mo ago
    Neither humans nor LLMs are currently equipped with separate sarcasm-awareness modes so telling someone to engage theirs can only be…ohh
    - xxs 11mo ago
      that's so beyond obviously a sarcastic remark. In that regard I'd consider a vast majority of the humans totally capable of detecting dead pan sarcasm both in spoken and written speech.
      - nandomrumber 11mo ago
        Isn’t there a well known internet adage that speaks to this? Do you remember what it is?

mrtksn 11mo ago

Ah this is just another step towards Turkification[0] of USA. This situation is just how it is in Erdogan's Turkey but you still have way to go if you are able to get your package out of the customs in less than a few weeks and no hustle. When the trade deals and tariff conditions get sufficiently complex(it gets more complex every day as the president accommodates specific companies and personal favors), the bureaucracy also increases so at some point it becomes too much of a nuisance to bother with individual imports. [0] https://www.theglobalist.com/the-turkification-of-america-trump-erdogan/ https://www.theglobalist.com/the-turkification-of-america-tr...

aranelsurion 11mo ago
It’s still a little hard to believe and terrifying how similar this particular title and the comments below are to what I would’ve read in Turkish forums circa 2010s. For Turkey it only got worse from there.
- chrneu 11mo ago
  yeah this is just a way for republicans to curry favors/influence from businesses they prefer. they make everything as hard as possible, then create loopholes for their buddies. this is what they've been claiming has been happening under democrats(projection), but in reality it's teh system they long for. Now that they're in power they can make it happen.

al_borland 11mo ago

I had this happen with FedEx. They released the package and delivered it without me paying. I submitted a dispute, which they say could take up to 6 months to process. I hate having this hang over my head, as I don’t want anything going to collections, but figured if I paid it I would have a harder time getting my money back. Mine was for a watch I got serviced. My own watch that I shipped out being returned to me… not a new import. If I end up having to pay what FedEx is saying I owe, it would have been cheaper for me to buy a new watch than to get it serviced, which is very upsetting. The whole process has been a horrible experience from the very start and I regret the entire thing. I should have just risked getting it serviced locally… or not done it at all.

Animats 11mo ago
There's something called a "carnet" for that case.[1] When something is leaving the country temporarily but coming back, there's a way to register that. This comes up a lot if you're doing trade shows or performances. [1] https://www.cbp.gov/trade/programs-administration/entry-summary/ata-carnet-faqs https://www.cbp.gov/trade/programs-administration/entry-summ...
- atomicthumbs 11mo ago
  better not use UPS; goods moving under ATA carnet are on their prohibited list
- IIsi50MHz 11mo ago
  At work, when we send stuff From USA to Canada for repair, we just need to put the correct Canadian customs code and "For warranty repair" on the packing slip.
rixed 11mo ago
> I should have just risked getting it serviced locally… Sounds like tariffs working as intended?
- al_borland 11mo ago

IncandescentGas 11mo ago

I just got an invoice from ups to pay a $16 brokerage fee to jpmorgan for collecting a $0.60 tariff on a sticker included in a box with a custom keyboard shipped from Taiwan. Seems like wall street is making out better than the US on this arrangement

dependency_2x 11mo ago
Please blog about this!
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
axiolite 11mo ago
Yeah, I noped-out when I saw eBay's writeup on tariffs owed by the buyer (not paid by the seller): "Shipping carriers or US Customs usually charge $5–$30 in processing fees. Add the item price, import fees, and processing fees to estimate your final cost." https://pages.ebay.com/tariffs/ https://pages.ebay.com/tariffs/ Not something I'm doing for a $5 item... I'll sit back and wait until the Supreme Court finds the tariffs are illegal, and the Fed has to pay every cent back to the businesses, suddenly sending the US spiraling into the biggest budget deficit in history.
- lostlogin 11mo ago
  How would this ever work? The vast bulk of tariffs are surely paid by the buyer, not the seller.
  - tjbiddle 11mo ago
    It's more nuanced than that. Tariffs do not always 100% immediately get passed on to buyer. If there's a $100 product you'd like to purchase and there's a 100% tariff, it won't be $200. That product was made abroad, let's for $20. So the tariff should be $20, not $100. The US-based owner will go to the supplier, say they're getting squeezed by tariffs and first they'll try to see what they can do to recategorize the tariff, or negotiate with their supplier to absorb some of the expense. Let's say that got it down to $15. The owner still doesn't want to increase costs by 15%, so they'll hold off for a while and absorb, and then eventually maybe increase 5-10 and absorb further; perhaps eventually going the full stretch - maybe not.

delichon 11mo ago

If SCOTUS finds the tariffs unconstitutional in Learning Resources v. Trump, they should order refunds.

femiagbabiaka 11mo ago
I would be surprised if the money was being held in escrow and could be refunded. Actually the Trump admin is using this as an argument to the SC as to why making the tariffs unconstitutional is a bad idea.
- Coffeewine 11mo ago
  Indeed. The moral of the story is that it’s ideal to do illegal acts which are difficult to undo, as it’ll give the judiciary greater pause.
  - chrneu 11mo ago
    This reminds me of the quote If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem. Kind of the same idea, sorta.
testing22321 11mo ago
According to the President, tariffs have already brought in $8 TRILLION dollars. [1] Might be hard to issue refunds. 1. https://reason.com/2025/09/02/the-white-house-says-trumps-tariffs-have-raised-8-trillion-in-revenue-thats-not-even-close/ https://reason.com/2025/09/02/the-white-house-says-trumps-ta...
ryanSrich 11mo ago
Because I've ran into the same issue. I don't think this is actually the tariff. I'm almost 100% positive this is the shipping companies (UPS, and FedEx, but UPS seems to be the biggest culprit) are slamming receivers with massive bills because they are miscategorizing many items coming from Europe.

celeritascelery 11mo ago

I had this happen to me on an order from Sweden. The order was about $450 + $50 shipping. I used an online tariff calculator and it said it should be 15%. So I was expecting ~$70. A few days before it is supposed to arrive UPS sends me a $242 bill for “tariffs, customs, and brokerage fees”. That basically made it 50% more expensive, but it was either pay it or loose the item. A month later they sent me an invoice that claimed the item cost $850. No idea how that happened. I am too scared to order anything from the EU anymore.

rabf 11mo ago
Its funny how little US citizens know about this, meanwhile in the rest of the world we have been paying import duties our entire lives. When an item is posted abroad forms have to be filled detailing the sender, the nature of the goods and the value. Some sellers willl bend the law for you and decalre the value of the goods to be lower than what you actually paid if you ask nicely. The main danger being that if the parcel is lost the sender will lose out on any insurance claim. The other option is to prepay tarrifs during the purchase of an item. Fedex and DHL usually offer this service which includes epedited customs clearance.
- celeritascelery 11mo ago
  I would have just been happy if the declared value was what I paid, instead of almost double.
- Terr_ 11mo ago
  > Its funny how little US citizens know about this Is it really? It sounds like you're implying it's some kind of woeful ignorance, but I say it's perfectly reasonable: 1. Each US state is already in a open-borders zero-tariff framework with all other states, which covers a very large portion of what people purchase. 2. Until recently, most individual consumers didn't need to think about tariffs on international goods, since most purchases were <$800 and covered by the de minimis rule. (Which AFAICT was in place for ~80 years.)
  - 11mo ago

michaelteter 11mo ago

Never fear! That $2000 check will be coming your way soon.

Terr_ 11mo ago
And all it cost was a mere $4,900 stealthily taken from your pocket—what a steal! https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-april-15-2025 https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-april-1...
chrneu 11mo ago
Lol the mental gymnastics of republicans to say "Tariffs aren't taxes on citizens, they're taxes on foreign countries" and now trump is easing tariffs on foods because they're too expensive. he's also thinking of shipping out STIMULUS CHECKS because people are struggling to buy tariffed goods. it's mind boggling what they must be thinking to justify this stuff.
- mrbombastic 11mo ago
  True freedom is letting your beliefs float to support whatever the fuck you feel like doing that day

eqvinox 11mo ago

In Germany, you can pre-register with DHL Express¹ with a bank account and optionally an EORI (Economic operators registration and identification) number, and then they immediately ding your bank account instead of providing their "disbursement service" where they 'benevolently' loan the customs fee to you for a 'minor' fee. I've not found similar options elsewhere, though I would assume they exist but might be corporate-only. ¹ annoyingly enough this doesn't even work with DHL, which is a separate thing from DHL Express in Germany.

exmadscientist 11mo ago
This is how it works here in the US as well. If you are using FedEx or UPS for cross-border express shipments, you need to open an account with them and have a credit card on file (or whatever). Then they will deliver first and bill you later, instead of the other way around without an account. This really does make a difference!

zdc1 11mo ago

Government insanity aside, the most insane part to me is that card networks allow partial refunds, but UPS wants to... mail a cheque?

c0balt 11mo ago
Maybe they want to play a similar game to mail-in rebates? Or it could just be an old process that has yet to be modernized
Maxion 11mo ago
They probably have this type of cash in some short term investment vechicle to earn extra cash, so they have to hold on to it for an average of n days. Writing a cheque and mailing it basically gives them quite a few more extra days of interest payments.

epolanski 11mo ago

As an European, I'm kinda pissed we don't retaliate the duties. I'd rather take a financial hit than act so weak and passive. I swear between chat control, selling out EU's privacy to US tech companies (you can check how many times Palantir & others met commission members, it's public), the insanity of the ICE ban and this tariffs passivity I'm very unhappy. Also, it's too convenient to only focus on material goods when the biggest US exports are gazillions in financial and IT services.

bruce511 11mo ago
Leaving aside the other (valid) items in your list, reciprocal tarifs really aren't helpful. Firstly, they're unnecessary. Just do what Canadians are doing. Stop buying US goods. Stop going to the US on holiday. Shop keepers get the hint real quick. Secondly, they just make goods more expensive for you. They gave no impact on American producers. So it may feel like the EU is doing nothing. But really, there's nothing they need to do. Tarifs are a tax levied by the US govt on US citizens. Sure demand might drop a bit in the short term, but that just drives producers to find other markets. Which in the long run is a good thing.
- Spivak 11mo ago
  > Stop buying US goods. If only there was a way to make US goods more expensive to discourage their purchase :P
  - bruce511 11mo ago
    Sure, that's one way to approach it. But I feel like the Canadian approach is better. You don't need to coerce fellow citizens, indeed the point is far more effective when it's not coerced. And if not enough citizens care to make the point, then they're also not going to thank you for rising prices.
- epolanski 11mo ago
  > Leaving aside the other (valid) items in your list, reciprocal tarifs really aren't helpful. You have completely missed my point: I don't care about them being helpful or not. It's not about the financial but political aspect.

fzeroracer 11mo ago

I had to pay a tariff charge of about $20 on an order of about $100 that I had placed about a year or so prior to this whole tariff bullshit. The idea that the president can decide to tariff whatever the fuck he wants is something that needs to go, since it's essentially levying taxes without representation. If somehow the current admin can't refund the money they stole from people then every single person involved should be thrown in jail and their property confiscated until that money is recovered.

lostlogin 11mo ago
Imagine how non Americans feel about Trump. He is fucking with the worlds economy nearly as much as he is messing up the US economy, yet we get even less representation. Retroactive taxes are clearly bs.
tasty_freeze 11mo ago
I bought a semi-custom instrument from Germany back in the spring of 2024, about $1800 (a Sandberg electric bass). But there was a year-long back log. The timing was perfect -- they told me it was ready to ship just when the tariffs went into effect, which cost me an extra $250 or so.

ryanSrich 11mo ago

I also imported a roughly $400 item from Romania. Was expecting a 30% tariff at most. Nope. $756. Sender says there is nothing they can do. UPS says that's the money I owe. They will send to collections if you go long enough without paying it. Reddit had no answers, and many are struggling with the same situation.

inferiorhuman 11mo ago
And now you know why DHL suspended shipments to the US for a bit. I think express (non-postal) shipments are being processed these days?

nielsbot 11mo ago

If (when) SCOTUS determines that Trump's tariffs were illegally collected and importers are refunded, will end consumers who paid tariffs also be refunded?

chrneu 11mo ago
nobody has any idea and you best bet trump is going to hold onto that money until it goes to the supreme court.
- matwood 11mo ago
  They are already making noise that it would be too hard to issue refunds, ie 'can't unscramble an egg'. So even when tariffs get ruled against, refunds may take years to get. People buying tariff refund claims are still only paying ~.25 on the dollar. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-street-tariff-trades-show-113000327.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-street-tariff-trades-sho...
  - nielsbot 11mo ago
    Yup--I linked an article about that in my other comment https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lutnick-family-angling-to-make-astronomical-sums-off-court-nixing-tariffs https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lutnick-family-angling-... The corruption is off the charts.

nielsbot 11mo ago

> Lutnick Family Angling To Make Astronomical Sums Off Court Nixing Tariffs https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lutnick-family-angling-to-make-astronomical-sums-off-court-nixing-tariffs https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lutnick-family-angling-...

maguay 11mo ago

And herein lies the rub: It's been like this in many countries for the longest time. In Thailand, say, you receive an order from abroad, the post office sends you a slip and you have to pay the assessed duties to receive the package. It often ends up feeing arbitrary; some stuff comes through, others get assessed at a higher value and you have to show receipts and convince them that no, this isn't that expensive of an item. The officially published rate of X matters little when the assessed value is up to an overworked official (in the most generous of readings of the situation). Nothing's exempt; somehow gifts from family and used items always seem most likely to trigger the tripwire. Ship something through DHL or a similar service, and they follow the letter of the law so you'll both end up paying the official duty (at least there, it's almost guaranteed to follow the declared value) plus their processing fee, storage fee, and whatever else they include. I've easily paid double the price of a product for all of those fees together. And worst, it's all unpredictable. At least if there's a 10% sales tax you can calculate that into if you want to buy an item. But once you get hit enough times, you start just not feeling like it's worth the mental load, time, and random financial hit to order stuff. America had no idea how good they had it, in the before times.

chrneu 11mo ago
>America had no idea how good they had it, in the before times. The downside is the insane consumption associated with that. Americans are responsible for an insane amount of pollution, far more per capita than any other people in the history of the world, much of which is tied to how easy/cheap it is to order shit we don't need. So, good if ya wanna buy cheap pollution, pretty bad if ya care about the next generation.
- themafia 11mo ago
  > Americans are responsible for an insane amount of pollution So does Canada. > far more per capita than any other people in the history of the world Not even remotely close to true. Aside from that it's down 20% from it's peak 40 (!) years ago. > much of which is tied to how easy/cheap it is to order shit we don't need. The data does not support this conclusion. > pretty bad if ya care about the next generation. Speaking of trends.. care to guess which country has doubled it's pollution in the last 10 years?

batch12 11mo ago

Sounds like something that could be weaponized. Order a bunch of 'gifts' to be shipped to a target via UPS/FedEx or whichever vendor helpfully pays the tarrifs for you. Then your victim has to fight collections or pay up.

refulgentis 11mo ago

UPS didn't charge it.

CGMthrowaway 11mo ago

Somewhat clickbait. The $684 duty charge was in error, and they got it reduced to the correct amount (an order of magnitude lower)

adrian_b 11mo ago
Not a clickbait, because it was quite difficult to get it reduced, so it is good to know how to do it. Moreover, the money have not been returned yet, that could take a long time and for many people losing access to such an amount would be very inconvenient, even if they knew that the money would be returned, eventually.
- CGMthrowaway 11mo ago
  It's definitely good to know how to do it. This guy shares his anecdote and it's worth pointing out while UPS made an error there is plenty of responsibility that can be taken by the buyer and seller when importing. Don't put your life and finances in the hands of someone else like a chump if you can avoid it. The buyer can request/urge the seller to properly declare items (e.g. as used vintage computer parts), and the seller can declare items and prices clearly. The buyer can also pre-clear with customs (this is more advanced, level 2, but Customs has been investing a lot into making pre-clear process easy and useful)

jonathanlydall 11mo ago

In the country where I live, these kinds of fees are generally referred to "import taxes", because it's the buyer who's having to pay extra money which is going to the tax authority, not the seller. While they can have an effect of encouraging domestic production, mostly they're a way to extract more money from the population.

Fabricio20 11mo ago
Hello fellow Brazilian! We cry in 200-300% on top of shipping costs.
- forinti 11mo ago
  That's just not true. It's 60% and 20% for items below US$50. You could theoretically get charged over 100% the price of the product if you buy something really cheap and shipping is more expensive than the product because shipping is taxed too.
- jonathanlydall 11mo ago
  South African actually, but fellow BRICSian I guess.

anonymousiam 11mo ago

UPS sucks today. I've had a UPS business account for over 35 years. In the past year or so they've become just terrible. Any call you make to them will have a hold time of at least half an hour. Many of my calls have gone over an hour. Usually you'll get transferred at least once. Also, earlier this year they outsourced their billing services to a third party, requiring additional consent on their website, and billing calls are now answered by an overseas call center. I had to call them several times a few months back. What triggered everything was a fraudulent shipment made using my UPS account. I thought that I got that straightened out after two calls lasting about 2.5 hours total. I got another bill the next month for the same fraudulent shipment where even though my shipping costs had been refunded, UPS was charging me a "missing PLD fee" because the criminals who shipped using my account number did not create the shipment using my online account. So after another 1.5 hours or so, that got resolved too. (They don't seem to offer an option to prevent shipments from being initiated from anywhere other than the online account.) While waiting on hold (both times), their pre-recorded on-hold content would urge me to user their webiste to resolve my issue, which I had already tried, and discovered that it was impossible. I had to call them one more time the following month because they began charging me $20 per month for no apparent reason. Without first notifying me, they decided that all direct bill accounts would now be charged this monthly fee. I was able to update my account with a credit card on file to get them to stop doing this. I would switch to FedEx, but their customer service is even worse. I closed my FedEx account 20 years ago, but I continued to receive spam from them for over 15 years with no way to opt out (because of the existing customer relationship that no longer existed).

chrneu 11mo ago
Didn't UPS try to move away from union labor a few years ago after a strike? I wonder if this has anything to do with that.
15155 11mo ago
> UPS business account > What triggered everything was a fraudulent shipment made using my UPS account If your business allows for it, set your account to "Deny Inbound Charges" at https://www.ups.com/vip/view https://www.ups.com/vip/view UPS is still probably the best domestically for ground shipping, FedEx is the best domestically for express parcels, and DHL is the best for inbound or outbound international without question.

tony69 11mo ago

Our business got charged a 200% tariff on a UPS import from Japan, completely incorrect. The dispute is taking much longer than OP’s. Either UPS doesn’t know what they’re doing, or they willfully charge higher fees, or maybe they’re just understaffed from the massive layoffs they did to try to save their stock price. edit: as a biz you (we) should use a legit import broker instead of UPS. But individuals like OP are stuck with no option.

gwittel 11mo ago

I’ve had a similar thing happen to me recently. 500$ tariff on $130 of stuff. The tariff should have been like $20. UPS has been completely non responsive and still won’t show me the customs forms. Total scam.

peteforde 11mo ago

I hate UPS with the passion of a thousand dying suns. I've long since opted to pay more to use DHL whenever I can, but a lot of Chinese suppliers simply won't deal with anyone except UPS. Drives me nuts.

Hobadee 11mo ago

At least this guy got the option to know what was happening. A few years ago I randomly got a letter from the IRS (or some other 3-letter agency - I can't recall which) demanding I pay thousands of dollars because I imported "industrial equipment". I found this odd as I'm just a normal consumer who buys crap of Amazon and whatnot - I'm not importing tens of thousands of dollars worth of industrial equipment. I verified everything and it wasn't a scam; the government was legitimately about to take me to court or start garnishing my wages or something like that. They said that UPS or FedEx had told them I imported the equipment but never paid import duties. I got ahold of the case worker for my case and told them it must be some error. After a week or two of back and forth, we finally figured out that it was for a laptop that a user in Canada had shipped back to me when they left the company, and it had been mis-categorized and valued on the import documents. Since we had purchased the laptop in the US in the first place and shipped it to the user, the case was dismissed and I didn't have to pay anything, but it's always a mini heart attack when you get a letter from Uncle Sam saying you owe thousands.

temptemptemp111 11mo ago
[dead]

blackhaj7 11mo ago

I got charged a $17 tariff on a doll my stepmum had knitted my daughter. Fun fun

epaga 11mo ago

I live in Germany and UPS is asking for 116€ customs / fees for a personal gift package someone sent me worth $47 (40€ which is below the new 45€ de minimis line). Nearly everything in the blog post happened to me just this past week except I didn't have 116€ at home in cash(!) so they will be delivering on Monday (when I will have cash and then try to get it all back from UPS). The whole thing is unbelievably infuriating and insane and I will warn anyone in the States to never again use UPS for shipping abroad.

rkagerer 11mo ago

Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum, which required me to fill out a UPS-specific form attesting to the steel and aluminum content I ordered a specialty lock and some keys valued at about $400, and paid an extra $400 in duties because of this. It's insane. Plot twist: I'm in Canada and was ordering a made-in-USA product from a US vendor. The duties were due to matching countertartiffs at the time. Sorry, but that's the last lock I buy from the US (and maybe the last thing with metal in it if I can help it) until this mess is resolved.

bombcar 11mo ago
At those prices it’d be cheaper to fly to the US and walk up to the company and buy it and fly back.
- testing22321 11mo ago
  For many years it was cheaper to fly to the US, buy a MacBookPro and fly back to Australia than it was to buy one in Australia.

thrw888 11mo ago

This was before current administration. FedEx charged me $60 AFTER delivery of $30 hat gifted to me from my US peers (yep, no warning, I got an email that I owe them $60 a few days after parcel was delivered). I originally thought it's a scam, but it was not. I diaputed this stating I should be informed BEFORE, not after delivery. After 6 months of back and forth I found that it's actually EU tarrifs.

bombcar 11mo ago
The secret to international shipments is to ALWAYS demand it be sent by the government postal service. You might still get hit with tariffs but you won’t get hit with insane brokerage fees.

accrual 11mo ago

Also a vintage PC enthusiast. I have completely stopped buying parts from overseas due to this issue. $60 for an old GPU + $Shipping + $ADMIN_FEE? No thanks.

msephton 11mo ago

UPS also tried this with me on a competition prize I won from Atari. I'm not paying to receive a mystery prize box. Thankfully I queried it and Atari stepped up and agreed to reimburse the fees, at which point I paid them to UPS. And that was shipping from United States to England, United Kingdom!

lunias 11mo ago

I live in the US and order a decent amount of things from overseas... I got hit with tariffs once by UPS when ordering some clothes from Germany. They wanted 44% of the total value of goods in government / brokerage charges. It's pretty clear that UPS is scamming people and hoping they don't fight the obscene charges. That being said, I hit pause on ordering from overseas. I don't want to deal with such terrible transparency in what I will be charged.

faefox 11mo ago

This is your daily reminder that tariffs are a tax on American consumers and are NOT paid by the country the tariffs are imposed on, no matter how desperately the current administration might try to convince you otherwise.

stefaniedaene 11mo ago

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