FedEx, UPS vow to return tariff refunds to customers

We issued you a refund for your $4 tariff and applied a $7 processing fee. Please see your attached $3 bill.

My fee is only $10. Pay me instead and SAVE money!

Did you get paid for the item?

Yeah, I love and try to support local businesses, but when they're double or triple the price of buying the same thing online or from a big box store, it makes it difficult. Which is not their fault of course - they're not selling at the same scale - but it doesn't negate the side effect of shopping local.

I always spend at least 5 minutes trying to get my stuff from alternate vendors, but when the 5 minutes is up and I haven't found it then I know Amazon is there, waiting for me to come back like a bad boyfriend.

You can shop online for things you can't find locally. That's understandable. You could also just avoid Amazon and use other online sellers. Just focus on buying what you can locally. It's important to consider that when shopping locally at least your tax dollars are going back into your community.

Same vibe as “we live in a republic, not a democracy”

I don't think I missed the point, either about retaliatory tariffs or their related costs. But I should have explained it better. An individual shipping personal gifts from their US location to Europe is often undertaken in a manner different than B2C or B2B shipments from the US. One significant difference is that those sending gifts typically pre-pay Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) to the carrier (UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc.) at the time of shipment. This prepayment of any relevant VAT, duties, and/or tariffs (“retaliatory” or otherwise) that may be in place at the destination country ensures that the gift recipient isn’t required to pay those fees to their country’s Customs before they can take delivery of the shipment. After all, it’s not much of a “gift” when the recipient has to pay twice its value to graciously receive it. Any increase in the “fees” you prepaid when shipping gifts to Europe may have been due to higher tariffs levied by the destination country, and/or because of across the board inflationary pressures on international trade and shipping generally. I send shipments to worldwide destinations weekly. As is typical for most businesses, I do not prepay DDP on any of those shipments. My customers are transparently informed that it is their responsibility to know and assume the payment of any additional fees, duties, tariffs, and the like imposed by their country before they can take possession of their shipment after it has cleared their country’s customs authority. Because my shipments are typically low volume/value, they typically fall below established thresholds for Customs duties or they incur only minimal import fees paid by my receiving customer. I have never had any international customer complain or protest about unexpected fees imposed by their Customs, primarily because as a standard business practice I make it explicitly clear to my non-US customers before, during, and after they purchase something from me that they might be responsible for additional fees imposed by their own destination country’s Customs regulatory agency, over which I have no control and about which it is their responsibility to be currently knowledgeable. Some countries reduce or waive fees for shipments below a certain threshold determined by that country (as the US formerly did with *de minimis* exemptions). Some have different regulations for non-commercial “gifts.” Each country has their own Customs processes, policies, regulations, and restrictions (and in Europe, some supplemental to universal EU provisions where applicable). The country of shipment origin, and the declared value and nature of the product/s in the shipment, further determine any final fees and costs paid by the recipient. The intended recipient might very well determine that the fees they are required to pay to release their shipment from their Customs agency or its designated carrier agent/broker (ie, DHL) are too high to justify delivery and possession of their international purchase (or gift as the case may be). They abandon the shipment. What happens next to the shipment is entirely controlled by the destination country's Customs agency – it may be returned to the original shipper, or it might be destroyed, or it might get “lost” never to be seen again, or it might remain unclaimed in some dusty Customs warehouse for an extended period of time. (Over the years I have received perhaps 3 or 4 shipments returned to me by foreign Customs, all of which were officially stamped “unpaid” or “unclaimed” and then returned beaten and battered a year or more after I originally shipped it, and then summarily binned by me.) In summary, it doesn’t matter if a tariff is long established or if it is levied as “retaliation” for another country’s actions. In every case it is ultimately the receiver’s responsibility to pay any amounts due at delivery. A private gifting party or a commercial retail shipper might at their discretion elect to prepay any part of, or all of, total shipping costs from origin to delivery, as a gesture of good will to the giftee or the customer. While it may make sense in a competitive market to absorb those costs, shippers are not obligated to do so. And absent a DDP prepayment by the shipper, come delivery time an uninformed retail customer or gifted loved one may be in for an unpleasant surprise.