Customs Tax Disputes - How long?

ozmo

Got a small low cost package from Aliexpress - Paid all Irish Vat (23%) on Aliexpress site.

Supposed to be Delivered via AnPost - but now held up in customs. They wanted charge Irish Tax again of 1euro!

Bit miffed, but I would have just paid again - but they want 3.50 processing fee. Not giving into that - I have already paid the 23% tax anyway....

Its been two weeks now - and the email I sent said if I tried contacting them a second time - I would go to the back of the Queue :(

Anyone else have to deal with this - dont want package destroyed - waste - and I dont want to burden the sellers with a refund if I say I didnt get it. Not giving in to double charging + handlers fees, either.

ArrBee

Yes. I have had to deal with it. It didn't end well though. :(

I tried, Emailing them, talking to them, raising a complaint, contacting their "customer advocate". None of which resulted in the release of my post.

a couple of the people I spoke to seemed OK, but they didn't really seem to know what to do.

In the end I contacted comreg about the lack of a working complaints procedure (the official channel was not responded to at all), and they didn't seem to bother by that either.

The whole process took so long that I was affraid that paying the tax and fee would result in no delivery so I gave up.

I hope you have better luck than me!

ArrBee

I will add, that if you can prove that the tax is already payed, they are supposed to release the delivery.

ozmo

Thanks - i send them the vat invoice I got from Aliexpress - 23% vat and matched the description on the package.

What surprised me was the implied threat that if I contacted them - I would go to the back of the queue.

"We are advising our customers to send one email per query. Your email will be attended to in strict date rotation based on the date of your initial enquiry. Additional emails sent within the same thread may lead to a delay in response as the query date will be marked as the latest email received and not the original contact made.   "

ArrBee

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121828829#Comment_121828829

I know, right?

What got me was that by the time the responded to the 1st email, there had actually been some other conversations via the phone where they said to email evidence through (to the same email address). So it wasn't clear if the rubish email response was to my 1st email, or the evidence I sent. and to try and find out would take another 6 weeks.

crazy system!

JVince

The electronic input by AliExpress was most likely incorrect.

Great system by an post to stop people hounding them. More companies should enforce something similar