I ordered a few small aero clothing items a couple weeks ago from HUUB Design with a total cost (minus shipping) of about 300 pounds. Because I’m in the USA and they (in the UK) use UPS for shipping to the USA, it was subject to a customs inspection. I get an email last week from UPS saying I owe over $200 on that package for it to pass customs, which I could either pay online with a small discount or wait to pay the UPS delivery person when it arrived. My first thought was that it was a scam, but all the tracking links and everything were accurate. I also thought that is much, much more than the now standard 10% tariff on items from the UK but the delivery was time sensitive for me so I went ahead and paid it - ended up being $194 total, with $177 for federal taxes and $17 for a brokerage fee. And this was on top of the exorbitant 40 pounds (about $52-55) shipping that HUUB charged for shipping a small envelope weighing less than a pound.
It wasn’t sitting well with me, so I ended up calling UPS to find out what the deal was. Turns out HUUB marked the reason for the items was for re-sale, so customs charged 58% of the total cost! I sent the emails from UPS and my payment receipt to HUUB customer service and explain their error, but I didn’t hear back from until nearly a week passed. Here is what they wrote:
“Please note once we send your order out any charges that customs/tax charge have nothing to do with us. I’m not sure why you was (sic) charged the amount on this but you we (sic) are not responsible for any of these charges.”
I think good customer service would be to refund me the difference between the tariff I was charged and the 10% tariff I should have been charged since it was their fault. Or even just an apology and a discount on my next purchase or something like that. It certainly wasn’t this.
Clearly, in the future I should refuse items with tariff charges that come to close what I paid for the items originally, even if I have race soon that I was planning on using the items. Has this happened to anyone else with HUUB or another international retailer? Any recommendations about what I can do at this point, if anything?
To contrast this experience, I recently ordered a few items from AeroCoach, which is also in the UK. The cost of the items was about the same and they were small enough that they could be shipped in a large envelope. Shipping was only 20 pounds and no custom fees at all!
This happened recently to me. I’m in the U.S. I ordered an item from Italy for $141 USD and received a postage due notice upon attempted delivery from UPS that an additional amount of $99 was due. I went online and refused shipment and then notified the merchant of my acceptance refusal.
That may be the real reason. Aerocoach uses Royal Mail - it ends up getting transferred to UPS once here but it seems to avoid any customs fees somehow, at least for the smaller packages. The Aerocoach package was even marked as ‘sale’ which UPS told me meant “re-sale”. Whereas I believe HUUB uses UPS from the beginning. This may take more looking into.
I had a similar thing happen to me a couple of months of ago when I ordered a trisuit from Huub. I paid the 39.99 BPS shipping. When it arrived I was informed that owed $473 for tariffs, almost twice what the suit cost. We refused to accept the item. I called UPS and got a recording that the hold time was over an hour wait. I waited for over an hour when the call was dropped. I charge $500 an hour wait time, so they owe me money now.
Just want add this is happening across the entire economy and if you aren’t equipped to handle it you’re going to get screwed.
UPS tried to clear a recent shipment for my company with 15k in duties, and I “have to agree now to pay because it’s in the middle of the clearance process.”.
I dug through the codes they were clearing it under and they were different than what we gave them and all wrong and could demonstrate so, and suddenly it was like $1500 bucks.
Pretty insane difference. I’m certain FedEx and UPS etc are all a nightmare right now because suddenly there is a lot higher workload being foisted on them when recently everything was relatively smooth sailing. Us in the USA are about to find out what the rest of the world experiences when they import things. Self inflicted for some reason.
Best you can ask for from HUUB is some price accomodations on a future order is my suggestion. Plus we’re going to start seeing a lot of good old fashioned smuggling of consumer goods and lines at border patrol in airports as people explain why that iPad shouldn’t be taxed etc
They (UPS) claimed that HUUB had marked the purpose of the items as re-sale, which has a 58% tariff. Interestingly the UPS guy said it was marked as “sale” which he said meant “re-sale.” I think he was wrong. But he said there was nothing he could do, and that I needed to contact HUUB about it.
Of course then HUUB ignores me for nearly a week and then they write a terse response claiming no responsibility whatsoever. If they had just shown a modicum of sympathy and/or said they are looking into their shipping practices because this is happening often (which it clearly is) then I would’ve been appeased. As it stands now, they’ve lost a customer for life. Ironically I now may be putting some or all of the items I received for sale on eBay and the classifieds here.
I’ve done a heap of looking and can’t find anything about different tariff rates for direct to customer versus direct to business. 58% sounds absolutely insane and I still stand by the fact UPS has made a mistake.
My FedEx bill for the UK purchase had two different values on it. I don’t have it in front of me but I’ll update this post when I do. I think one was something bike related and the other was for a plastic storage case.
One was 10%, the other was 20%, and those charges were combined. So roughly an additional ~$255 on a ~$850 bike case.
