UPS billing me VAT on a parcel I refused and returned

davedelaney

In March I ordered a specific piece of hardware on Amazon for around £450. It was sold by a third party but bought through Amazon. After a week of delays with no firm dispatch date, I asked the seller to cancel.

The next morning I got a dispatch notice. The seller then said the item had already gone out, but told me not to worry: just reject the delivery and they would refund me. They did refund me, and a few days later UPS turned up. I rejected the delivery and it went back to the seller in Germany. UPS's own tracking confirms the return.

That seemed to be the end of it, until last week. I got a letter from UPS demanding a late payment fee of about £9. I rang them and the agent told me it was an error and not to worry, though they took my email address. A few days later an email arrived saying their team had investigated and found the charges had originally been billed to the wrong customer, that this had now been corrected, and that the charges for the shipment had been "appropriately applied to your account."

I don't have a UPS account and I'm not a business. I pushed for detail and they sent the original invoice: a disbursement fee of around £15, VAT of around £95, and the late fee on top.

So I'm being asked to pay import VAT plus a UPS fee on a parcel I refused at the door, one their own records show was returned to the sender. I never accepted the goods and never received them.

How am I liable for this? Once the parcel was rejected and sent back, surely it's on the seller to settle with UPS, not me.

born_again

As you were the importer of the item you were liable for any charges.

visidigi

Realistically you refusing the package at the door did not stop the importation of the package into the country by UPS, who paid upfront to enable the delivery to the door. But in order for UPS to get the money they paid back they would have had to do a controlled export of the pack.

What has the shipper done about it?

MyRealNameToo

If they've mixed up who was due to pay the taxes they may have also mixed up where any credit for its return went.

Have you spoken to the sender? If they are a reasonable sized business then they may have better contacts in UPS and have more levers to pull in terms of getting stuff done.

davedelaney

Just wrote to the seller now via Amazon.

It baffles me slightly as what's to stop a nefarious individual from abroad sending a parcel full of rocks to someone and declaring the value to be extortionate and making the unsuspecting receiver be liable for thousands in import fees even if they reject it.

I completely understand paying fees for deliveries that were accepted (or accepted/returned) but surely if the shipper incurs fees on a rejected delivery it's the sender's responsibility to make them whole (as they formed the contract with the shipper). eg. UPS can reclaim the VAT as no goods remained in the country and any admin fees are for the sender to pay

sheramber

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82018569#Comment_82018569

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-repayment-or-remission-of-charges-on-rejected-imports-ce1179

Undervalued

You might have a claim for your losses against the seller if they failed to dispatch on time and you were entitled to cancel as a result..

However, as others have suggested, this is not in any way UPS's fault. So why should they be out of pocket?

davedelaney

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82018601#Comment_82018601

I wasn't suggesting UPS should be out of pocket but rather arguing their claim should be against the seller; they're the company with the UPS account, UPS's customer and the one who formed the contract by commissioning them to provide a service. At no point did I engage with UPS outside of rejecting a parcel they wanted to deliver to my address.

If I accepted delivery I'd have zero qualms about paying up.

visidigi

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82018632#Comment_82018632

The shipper made you responsible for them by telling UPS they were delivering to you. Because UPS were told to get charges from you they are. After they were contracted you refused the delivery, post clearance. Since BREXIT this is more expensive to do and more complicated to figure out when re-exporting something that was not repaired, replaced and is in fact the original product

This wont be fixed quickly or simply, but it should be sorted eventually.

Aylesbury_Duck

what's to stop a nefarious individual from abroad sending a parcel full of rocks to someone and declaring the value to be extortionate and making the unsuspecting receiver be liable for thousands in import fees even if they reject it.

Nothing I suppose, and the hypothetical question has been posed before. Whether it's ever happened I have no idea. I don't see the relevance here, though. There's a clear audit trail of your purchase, which is evidence that you agreed to import the package. No such evidence would exist in your parcel of rocks scenario.

user1977

I would guess that buried somewhere in the tax legislation is a method of contradicting the value stated on the parcel. We have had threads before with wrong amounts (not maliciously, just typos or currency conversions gone wrong) but not sure what the outcomes were.