Purchased part from EU via Ebay, Fedex are asking to pay extra

mark_uk

Purchased car part via ebay from seller in Spain.
Order total was £192. Part delivered week later and 2 weeks later received a Fedex invoice for £72 (import duties etc).

I reached out to Fedex clarify what costs are listed etc as i dont speak Spanish. Nothing for 2 weeks and today received that my "debt" has been passed to collection agency called AccountControl.

Have attached Invoice. Are these charges correct?
Shipping cost was paid by me via ebay.

Thank you!

Exodi

While I understand eBay has a requirement for sellers to inform buyers about potential import charges, ultimately buyers are responsible for paying them.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/taxes-import-charges?id=4121

Is the DCA ControlAccount (not Account Control)? Personally I would persevere contacting FedEx, insisting that you were not supplied an invoice in English before this was escalated to the DCA, but you're willing to be reasonable and settle the invoice if they cancel the enforcement action. I wouldn't try and settle this with the DCA directly as they will insist on a higher amount than the original invoice as compensation for their services.

Also, personally, instead of originally writing back for a translation to what would have obviously looked like demand for payment, in this day and age I'm suprised you didn't just translate it yourself on Google.

mark_uk

Thank you for feedback. My concern is more towards the fees itself. I knew beforehand that i will have to pay import duties. But is paying 36% duties reasonable in this case?

Exodi

mark_uk said:

Thank you for feedback. My concern is more towards the fees itself. I knew beforehand that i will have to pay import duties. But is paying 36% duties reasonable in this case?

Depends on the H/S tariff code (aka commodity code) stated for the part - the buyer would have declared it while creating the shipment (or listed 'car parts' and let the shipping agent pick the most appropriate one themselves). It's hard to know what he declared it is without asking.

36% isn't unheard of for certain classifications. Did eBay collect tax from you during the purchase or could this figure also include sales tax?

mark_uk

1. Order cost overall is £198 where £25 were paid for shipping. Fedex are putting duty on overall cost
H/S tariff code for "Autoparts" is 20% tax. 

Exodi

mark_uk said:

1. Order cost overall is £198 where £25 were paid for shipping. Fedex are putting duty on overall cost
H/S tariff code for "Autoparts" is 20% tax. 

Sorry I can't make total sense of what you're saying here but I think you may be confusing duty with tax as 20% is just too coincidental bearing in mind the tax on goods sold in the UK just happens to also be 20%.

This is why I asked whether you paid sales tax to eBay on your behalf, or if you hadn't paid VAT at all.

If I had to guess, looking back at this again, DT might mean Duty on the original transaction, VT might mean VAT on the original transaction, DPC is some form of service charge and VAT is the VAT on the service charge.

This would put the duty around ~2% which is about in line with the duty I'd expect for a car part (but the reason for questioning it earlier, is it's entirely plausible if it was misclassified by the seller as a big lump of metal to incur high duty rates - not that I believe that that is what has happened here).

If my hunch is right, the duty is a red herring - most of the charge is effectively for VAT on the original transaction that hasn't been paid.

SimonFF

This is not the Brexit we voted for!

DullGreyGuy

mark_uk said:

Purchased car part via ebay from seller in Spain.
Order total was £192. Part delivered week later and 2 weeks later received a Fedex invoice for £72 (import duties etc).

I reached out to Fedex clarify what costs are listed etc as i dont speak Spanish. Nothing for 2 weeks and today received that my "debt" has been passed to collection agency called AccountControl.

Have attached Invoice. Are these charges correct?
Shipping cost was paid by me via ebay.

Thank you!

As the order was over £135 taxes will be paid on delivery.

You can read what the different numbers are at the bottom of the page but it will be VAT, duty, £12.75 handling fee and then the VAT on the handling fee.

Duty will be 2.5% or less, depends on the commodity code
VAT is 20% and is paid on the combination of the value of the goods + shipping + duty above

Handling fees for clearing customs for you and paying it in advance for you are normally a % of the value of the goods with a floor of something around £15

mark_uk

Exodi said:

mark_uk said:

1. Order cost overall is £198 where £25 were paid for shipping. Fedex are putting duty on overall cost
H/S tariff code for "Autoparts" is 20% tax. 

Sorry I can't make total sense of what you're saying here but I think you may be confusing duty with tax as 20% is just too coincidental bearing in mind the tax on goods sold in the UK just happens to also be 20%.

This is why I asked whether you paid sales tax to eBay on your behalf, or if you hadn't paid VAT at all.

If I had to guess, looking back at this again, DT might mean Duty on the original transaction, VT might mean VAT on the original transaction, DPC is some form of service charge and VAT is the VAT on the service charge.

Thank you once again.
My questions are:

1. Should i be charged by Fedex on overall value of this purchase? As mentioned previously, part itself only cost £173
2. Are Fedex calculations correct? I have reached out for the to clarify what this invoice shows but to no avail. Even if I use translate (as you suggested) it gives me zero understanding what i am paying for and what amounts. 

Looking at various import calculators they telling me my import duty for "autoparts" (8708999790) should only be £39
(import duty for 8708999790 is 2%)

RFW

SimonFF said:

This is not the Brexit we voted for!

There's a post by me on here sometime in 2016 when I suggest that this could happen. I doubt I could have swung the vote if anyone had paid attention!

In my experience FedEx aren't particularly forthcoming at explaining what the charges are exactly for. I had a dispute with them a while ago and they sent reminders, debt collector letters, etc. I continued to dispute and they continued to ignore or refer to the original invoice. I would have been happy to go to court but that never came close.Eventually the collection letters stopped.

Spoonie_Turtle

mark_uk said:

Exodi said:

mark_uk said:

1. Order cost overall is £198 where £25 were paid for shipping. Fedex are putting duty on overall cost
H/S tariff code for "Autoparts" is 20% tax. 

Sorry I can't make total sense of what you're saying here but I think you may be confusing duty with tax as 20% is just too coincidental bearing in mind the tax on goods sold in the UK just happens to also be 20%.

This is why I asked whether you paid sales tax to eBay on your behalf, or if you hadn't paid VAT at all.

If I had to guess, looking back at this again, DT might mean Duty on the original transaction, VT might mean VAT on the original transaction, DPC is some form of service charge and VAT is the VAT on the service charge.

Thank you once again.
My questions are:

1. Should i be charged by Fedex on overall value of this purchase? As mentioned previously, part itself only cost £173
2. Are Fedex calculations correct? I have reached out for the to clarify what this invoice shows but to no avail. Even if I use translate (as you suggested) it gives me zero understanding what i am paying for and what amounts. 

Looking at various import calculators they telling me my import duty for "autoparts" (8708999790) should only be £39
(import duty for 8708999790 is 2%)

You have customs duty, payable on items/orders over £135, and import VAT payable on all regardless of value (but on orders under £135, eBay collects it). 

Import VAT has always been on the whole order value including postage, I'm not sure about customs duty.