FedEx Duty fee with no warning

andyjonesx

Hi,

Yesterday I received a £75 (including a £10 admin fee) invoice from FedEx for taxes and duty on a product shipped from an non-EU country. I completely understand why the charges were sent, but my problem is that I had no pre-warning I would get them.

The website I ordered off had no mention that I would receive them. I have looked all through the Terms and Conditions to no avail, there is nothing on the postage page either. I had even emailed them beforehand to see how much shipping to England would cost, and they failed to mention it there.

I emailed the website and they said FedEx should have told me about the fees, and that they don't mention them on their site to keep the price down. FedEx told me I should have been warned about the charges from the seller.

Where do I stand with this? Do I have a case to not pay? I had absolutely no warning on this, on top of it it wasn't even me that signed for the parcel.

What is to stop another website sending something, not mentioning any charges, then a company they use charge me duty + a 500% administration fee?

Thanks for any help/guidance offered.
Andy

custardy

andyjonesx wrote: »

Hi,

Yesterday I received a £75 (including a £10 admin fee) invoice from FedEx for taxes and duty on a product shipped from an non-EU country. I completely understand why the charges were sent, but my problem is that I had no pre-warning I would get them.

The website I ordered off had no mention that I would receive them. I have looked all through the Terms and Conditions to no avail, there is nothing on the postage page either. I had even emailed them beforehand to see how much shipping to England would cost, and they failed to mention it there.

I emailed the website and they said FedEx should have told me about the fees, and that they don't mention them on their site to keep the price down. FedEx told me I should have been warned about the charges from the seller.

Where do I stand with this? Do I have a case to not pay? I had absolutely no warning on this, on top of it it wasn't even me that signed for the parcel.

What is to stop another website sending something, not mentioning any charges, then a company they use charge me duty + a 500% administration fee?

Thanks for any help/guidance offered.
Andy

well you knew you were ordering from a non EU site?
did you know about customs charges?

shaun_from_Africa

What is to stop another website sending something, not mentioning any charges, then a company they use charge me duty + a 500% administration fee?

Because the fee charged must be reasonable and can only cover the costs incurred in processing and collecting the duty.
Anything overly excessive and you would have a very good case under the unfair terms in contracts regulations.

A lot of overseas sellers don't mention import duties for 2 reasons.
One is that there is no way that they could know the regulations for every country in the world, and the second reason is that it is the importers (buyers) responsibility to make sure that anything imported into the UK is correctly declared so it is their responsibility to check on what they may be charged by HMCE (or is it HMRC now?) and the importing agent.

andyjonesx

custardy wrote: »

well you knew you were ordering from a non EU site?
did you know about customs charges?

I assumed it would have been mentioned when I emailed (as it said to email for specific costs to each country). After they gave me the cost I thought that would include everything, since I told them what I wanted, and what country it was going to.

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

Because the fee charged must be reasonable and can only cover the costs incurred in processing and collecting the duty.
Anything overly excessive and you would have a very good case under the unfair terms in contracts regulations.

Fair enough.

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

A lot of overseas sellers don't mention import duties for 2 reasons.
One is that there is no way that they could know the regulations for every country in the world, and the second reason is that it is the importers (buyers) responsibility to make sure that anything imported into the UK is correctly declared so it is their responsibility to check on what they may be charged by HMCE (or is it HMRC now?) and the importing agent.

As the response to the quote above, I had emailed as requested to ask about the specific price to post to England.

It just feels wrong that I can be sent something and forced to pay, with absolutely no idea it was coming. So you don't think there is any case to have it dropped?

shaun_from_Africa

I had emailed as requested to ask about the specific price to post to England

But that is exactly they quoted you.
The FedEx and customs charges were added after the item had already arrived in England.

I'm afraid that you've no chance of getting the customs charges dropped, and very little, if any chance of the FedEx fee being cancelled.

custardy

andyjonesx wrote: »

I assumed it would have been mentioned when I emailed (as it said to email for specific costs to each country). After they gave me the cost I thought that would include everything, since I told them what I wanted, and what country it was going to.




Fair enough.



As the response to the quote above, I had emailed as requested to ask about the specific price to post to England.

It just feels wrong that I can be sent something and forced to pay, with absolutely no idea it was coming. So you don't think there is any case to have it dropped?

no chance of it being dropped
they quoted you a shipping charge and thats what you paid
customs are down to the receiving country

andyjonesx

Okay thanks. I guess I'll just have to pay it then. I feel like the website should warn that there may be further charges depending on country. I've read a few other things and apparently most do pre-warn.

paddyrg

Specifically, the sender would not know the cost. On import, HMRC will appraise the duty due on the goods, which will vary by item category, then apply VAT, and FedEx will pay them that amount on account and rebill you. The sender has no way of knowing all the different categories and is not qualified to assay on behalf of all the national customs for all the countries they ship to.