How to handle customs charge when sending to USA

[bobsbrickstuff]

I've read up from searching the forum and looking through these links pasted below, but still not quite sure what happens regarding the customs fee.

I'd have to buy a label from Royal Mail's site, and now they're requiring me to also pay a customs fee while purchasing, however on the eBay order page under the "What your buyer paid" heading there's no customs been paid to me. How should this be handled? 

https://pages.ebay.com/tariffs/

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sellercentre/global-sales/customs-requirements

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Business-Seller-Board/US-tariffs-reminder-and-Royal-Mail-shipping-ch...

[style_wise]

It seems to me that you have two Custom Postage options regarding items goint to the USA, depending on which courier you send with. With the ones available through the Post Office:

- Royal Mail Tracked Signed to the States, you add 10% + £1.50 fee to the postage rate for your USA buyers.

- DPD and UPS you add £1.50 fee to the postage rate for your buyers, plus provide their email & telephone number upon dispatch. The courier then collects the 10% tariff from them before items leave the UK

If anyone else has another workaround, or experience with other couriers, please share it.

[bobsbrickstuff]

Thanks. Unfortunately with customs being a percentage of the order value, it can't be applied automatically. I have a wide range of postage policies, but I can't make over 300 different policies, 1 for each item.

On Saturday I spent a load of time blocking USA from all my postage policies... and had another order from there yesterday so have to block them another way. Would love a single country block list that applies to all policies!

[style_wise]

...sorry meant DPD and EVRI (not UPS)

[style_wise]

Yup, it is frustrating and time consuming. I have actually only added the £1.50 fee to postage and left everything else alone. Since the tariffs have been ruled illegal by the USA courts, I have fingers crossed that things will change again. Again if you use DPD or EVRI through the Post Office they will collect the tariffs and you won't have to change anything.

[bzmotman]

If you go to account settings then select Postage preferences, scroll down to Rates & Exclusions where you will see Exclude postage locations. Click on edit and you will Domestic & International. in the International section you will see North America and in there you can exclude USA. That should block it. I say should because 1 of my regular customers managed to buy a couple of items but he might have slipped in before the block took effect. It is impossible to invoice the USA so you can cancel the sale using Problem with address as the reason if it does happen.

One word of warning - if you use this method be aware that some countries eg Russia, Belarus & Israel appear in more than 1 section & you have to block them in each section.

[bobsbrickstuff]

Forgot that feature kind of exists, but I'm not able to use it as I have different postage policies for different sizes and values. I think every time I've looked at using rate tables instead it wasn't right for my business

[yuhjuk4]

I am having the same issue here with customs. I don't have the possibility to block USA customers as I sell some brands that are mostly bought by US customers. In this economic climate, I really need those sales.

I have added 5 pounds extra to USA shipping to cover the customs tax charged by Royal Mail upfront. But today I had a 300 dollars sale, so it is not really feasible to pay 10% off it. I can see that the customer already paid this fee to ebay, but ebay does not pass it to the seller so we can pay it through Royal Mail. 

Has anyone found any courier that would accept the ebay invoice as proof that the buyer already paid the customs fee? It's a bit silly to have to pay the fees twice for the same transaction. 

[bobsbrickstuff]

Yeah, I've blocked US now, but in the meantime had one item where the customer has just been ignoring the customs emails from Evri, and another that the customer didn't receive the emails so it's being returned to me, and after a conversation with the Parcel2Go I don't yet know if they're going to be successful in redirecting it back to the customer or I'm going to be out the £25ish that the label cost.

Are you using custom postage policies? You could set up two separate policies, one that includes the US sales and another that blocks US, and only use the first one for the listings where £5 will cover the customs. 

Also can you show a screenshot of it showing the customer paid the customs? I don't think I saw that but I did see sales tax.

[yuhjuk4]

Yes, I have that issue when shipping items to Europe which are above 150 euros as they don't pay the VAT upfront and the customers reject the parcel when they find out they have fees to pay. I had a customer from Germany yesterday who basically said that if I don't pay her customs fees, the parcel would be coming back to me. In the end, I had to issue her with a partial refund to cut my losses.

I hope that your customer does pay the customs tax and get their parcels, international returns are the worst!

It does say sales tax, but it must be the customs tax as it's always 10%. The state sales tax is usually below 10% and ebay was charging that before. For example, the sale I had today was from NY and the state retail tax is only 4% over there. 

I also wonder what would happen if I did pay the customs tax to royal mail and the customer decides they want to return the item because it does not fit, let's say. Will the customs tax be refunded if the item is returned? It's probably something I need to check with Royal Mail, but it is quite frustrating not having all the information. 

[bobsbrickstuff]

Ouch, that's frustrating.

I think before the customs and sales tax were separate entries though?

I'd guess you wouldn't get the customs refunded, but you'll have got it from the extra £5 you charge, and we don't get the refund on the postage either

[eyewear247]

@yuhjuk4 

I have already spoken to Royal Mail regarding the upfront tariff fee paid (by sender) in the event of a customer return and unfortunately they confirmed it would not be refundable upon any item being re-imported back to the UK.

Sales to the US were a healthy part of my business until I switched the US off as a postal destination. Currently I do not see a way forward to getting selling over there again, that's even if the buyers were prepared to pay the increased prices that I would have to charge. 

[4_bathrooms]

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@yuhjuk4 wrote:

I have added 5 pounds extra to USA shipping to cover the customs tax charged by Royal Mail upfront. But today I had a 300 dollars sale, so it is not really feasible to pay 10% off it. I can see that the customer already paid this fee to ebay, but ebay does not pass it to the seller so we can pay it through Royal Mail. 

Has anyone found any courier that would accept the ebay invoice as proof that the buyer already paid the customs fee? It's a bit silly to have to pay the fees twice for the same transaction. 

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eBay do not collect the tariff unless the item is sent via the GSP. In some US states eBay collects and remits the state's sales tax - which is likely what you can see - but this is separate to the tariff. If you're not using the GSP and sending via Royal Mail you will have to pay the tariff to RM; eBay will not have collected it from the buyer.

[yuhjuk4]

I wouldn't have got it from the extra £5 as the customs fee is 30 dollars...

[yuhjuk4]

Thank you for sharing, that is good to know. 

[bobsbrickstuff]

I meant more generally for other parcels, even before this change we wouldn't get postage refunded on something a buyer didn't collect from their post office, I've been stung like that. But yeah it's not properly covered.

What I'm thinking is you could use a postage policy that allows shipping to USA for items where £5 will cover the customs fee, and another policy that blocks USA for the more expensive items. 

[eyewear247]

Don't forget eBay will be also charging you approx. 15% FVF (more if promoted) on any postage costs charged to the buyer so you would need to account for that too when increasing the postage costs to cover the tariff.