Fed-Ex Customs Charge

Exclamation Marc

Hey all.

Just looking for a bit of advice regarding a Fed-Ex customs charge/import duty.

My mum runs a small shop and she recently ordered jewellery from India for her shop. I'll round numbers up to make it less complicated. She ordered €2500 worth of goods from a supplier. After months of delays and excuses, the supplier finally sent the goods, yet when the goods arrived there were only around €900 worth of goods in the box. She contacted him about this by email and after weeks of no replies he finally replied saying he would send them that week. No reply after that and no sign of him since that e-mail in August.

My mum has recently been in contact with Alibaba about the supplier (where she found him) and her complaint about the issue was upheld and the seller was removed from the site or his membership 'suspended/terminated' (although im sure he'll re-appear under a different name)

My mum is very out of pocket on this one. The first issue which I'll save for another day is how to get back the difference in her money (she paid by bank transfer). However the issue I was looking for advice for was about the import duty.

The import document stated that the full €2500 worth of goods were in the box, yet as stated there was only 2/5 of that (if even). FedEx are looking for the full import duty on the €2500 and are now threatening legal action unless its paid by October 20th. They say that they have no way of knowing the actual value of goods in the box (which we accept) but surely we can't be shafted into paying import duty on goods we never received.

Not playing the violin here but my mums shop is a small hat hire/jewellery sale shop and she can't afford to write the money off, especially when she hasn't received the stock.

Any advice would be appreciated on either problem but especially the FedEx one as its quite time sensitive.

Thanks

Pacing Mule

Bottom line is that fedex have effectively paid the customs charge on your behalf and our now looking for the payment.

As a seperate issue you can appeal the customs charge to the revenue and given the circumstances you'd most likely receive a refund from them.

This happened me before where the sender of a parcel from the USA over declared the value of the goods x 10. I had to either refuse the parcel completely or accept it, pay the duty/tax and then appeal it (which I did as the parcel was time sensitive gift for a birthday) A refund was received within a few weeks of appealing it.

Hope this helps.

jor el

Since this is a business transaction, consumer legislation does not apply. She has no protection at all. Also, since she paid in cash to a supplier in India, whom it appears is a scammer, the money is gone. She will never see that again. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

The only thing that could be done is to appeal the customs charge. This could be done with FedEx, but probably best to deal directly with customs.

Apart from that, live and learn. Never pay with a bank transfer if you can't afford to lose the money. Never pay with a bank transfer to anywhere outside Europe, or even outside Ireland preferably.

91011

The duty amount would be quite small or possibly zero. Fedex are probably looking for vat at point of entry which they collect on behalf of revenue.

If your mum is running a shop she is probably vat registered and therefore the entire vat can be claimed back in the normal way.

DYLF

one of 2 things you can do...
a) contact Fedex and ask to speak to their vat & duty dept and explain the situation and see what they can do..
b) speak to customs directly and explain the situatiion....


either way you should be able to claim a refund on it

dudara

Given that this is a business issue rather than a Consumer Issue, I'm moving this to Entreprenurial & Business Management.