Below is a story of my real-life dealings with God-damned courier companies. Much like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it is told in the form of letters back and forth. Email, in this case. The identities of the involved parties have not been hidden, because I just don't give a shit.
On Sep 18, 2007, at 1:59 PM, everythinghome wrote:
Hi Adrian,
Thanks again for choosing everythinghome for your projector purchase. Your business is always appreciated and I sincerely hope you are enjoying your XR-10X.
I have just received some information about the delivery of your projector from FedEx. They are claiming you have not paid your customs fees/duties/taxes after their broker, FedEx Trade Networks, sent a notice back in June asking you to do so. As stated in the auction you completed and hence legally agreed to; all taxes, broker fees and customs duties are your responsibility. Failure to pay them will prompt our shipping agent to alert us and we will contact you. Well, we are now contacting you. Fees imposed by your Government upon goods imported to its citizens are unavoidable and never optional and I have no control over them. In fact, I do everything in my power to keep them as low as possible which is why when I shipped this, I declared it a gift to save you money.
Adrian, there is no way I can afford, nor will I ever pay custom duties YOUR government imposes upon YOU or will I ever pay the broker fees charged by FedEx Trade Networks to expedite your order through customs and on to YOUR home. I would never expect you to pay my U.S. Customs fees if I had bought something from you so I obviously hope you would feel the same way. After all, by completing our auction, you already agreed to this. However, in the letter that came across my desk yesterday, FedEx is requiring me to pay your bill. This is impossible for me to do without collecting payment from you first. I urge you to submit payment today, as your item arrived back in May. If I am not in receipt of your payment by Friday, 9/21/07, I will need to impose an additional $25 service fee to this bill, effective on 9/22/07. Believe me; I do not want to do this but after product cost, shipping, eBay and PayPal fees, I only made about $15.00 U.S. dollars on your order because I was helping my supplier liquidate these units.
What’s frustrating for me, is after the tiny profit I made on selling this unit to you, I now have to expend extra time in becoming a bill collector for FedEx, thereby earning even less on your transaction. I do not have any spare time. Having to write this allows me even less… And even after I finally receive your custom duties payment, I will make less once again because if you submit payment via PayPal or Credit Card, I will incur additional PayPal or merchant bank fees on your payment for this bill. Please tell me, Adrian, how is the just and fair to me. I gave you the deal of the century on your projector and until I get your payment you have left me with nothing but a deficit on this transaction.
I take credit cards over the phone. Ask for Mike at 612-790-1261. You may also PayPal the funds to everythinghome@comcast.net. You should have all information necessary to prove what you owe me from a previous notice. If not, please provide a fax number and I will be happy to incur additional long distance charges on this transaction to provide you a copy of the bill. For now, a summary is outlined below:
Itemized Bill:
Duty: $36.38
GST – Customs: $41.87
Brokerage: $46.25
PST: $0.00
Duty Disbursement: $5.85
Total Due Now: $130.35
Thank you in advance for your prompt reply and lightning quick payment of $130.35. I look forward to receiving it today. I would appreciate your immediate attention and urgency be directed to this timely matter. If you need until Friday, 9/21/07, please let me know but bear in mind every 7 days past 9/21/07 will incur an additional $10 service fee in addition to the initial $25 imposed, if your payment is not received by 9/21/07.
Please call me at 612-790-1261 with questions or concerns. I will be contacting you via phone if payment or a reply to this email is not received by 9/20/07.
Regards,
Mike Molitoris
Client Relations Director
everythinghome
Direct: 612-790-1261
From: etp PayPal [mailto:paypal@electricteaparty.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 8:58 PM
To: everythinghome
Subject: Re: ***Your recent Sharp XR-10X purchase from everythinghome on eBay***
Importance: High
Mike,
Thank you for your email, and I apologize for any inconvenience you may have suffered. However, I am afraid FedEx has been to hasty in pinning you with brokerage and you have been to hasty in sending me a disgruntled email; I assure you I never received any post, email messages, or phone calls regarding brokerage for this package, otherwise I would have paid it. I can see one attempt at contact going unnoticed, but not several - thus it is logical to conclude that FedEx did not try very hard to contact me before hassling you. What's more, FedEx made but one attempt to deliver this package in the first place, and then dropped it at a depot without notifying me. All-in-all, FedEx provides what I can only call, with all the politeness I can possibly muster, EXTREMELY SHODDY SERVICE. I spent DAYS discussing pickup or delivery options with them over the phone, and ended up having to arrange a day off work and a round-trip cab ride to their out-of-the-way depot in order to pick up this package. On top of all of that, they now stick me with a huge "brokerage" bill. Needless to say, I will never, ever again bid on any eBay auction that uses FedEx as a shipper. They are a scourge.
That said, this demon company has come crying to you with a problem they should have sorted out with me. However, having not received any notice of these fees myself, and having been further chided, cajoled, and threatened with additional fees by you, I don't think I will take it on good faith that I owe you an additional $130.35 (US or Canadian?) for this item. I do not have a fax machine, nor do I have access to one. A scan/email of the bill will be sufficient - or better yet, have FedEx bring their whining to me directly instead of going crying home to someone else. I will pay you via PayPal (upon production of the bill) either Thursday or Friday, depending on when I get paid. Furthermore, since you have been so persuasively petulant, I will add an additional amount to cover your PayPal fees as long as you can direct me to a resource on PayPal proving what those fees will be.
Keep in mind all of this is out of the goodness of my heart, as you have not gone out of your way to be polite, and being in a different country, I seriously doubt you could legally extract any money from me by force.
In sum:
1) Send me a hi-res digital photo or scan of the FedEx bill, or have FedEx phone me themselves. Vonage deflects callers with hidden numbers, so they better not hide behind a screen.
2) Send me proof of PayPal's fees.
3) Send an itemized request for payment via PayPal, detailing all items.
4) I will pay you for the sake of Karma.
5) Ship all your future items via USPS because all courier companies are bastards.
Sincerely,
Adrian Thornton
On Sep 18, 2007, at 8:58 PM, everythinghome wrote:
Adrian,
Thank you for your reply. A scan of both the bill and the letter produced by FedEx is included in this email.
Please note FedEx is a completely different entity than ‘FedEx Trade Networks’, the broker that facilitates the handling of your package. Once ‘FedEx Trade Networks’ sends you an invoice, if they do not get paid, FedEx USA pays ‘FedEx Trade Networks’, which is why FedEx USA then comes after us. As far as the mishandling of your item during delivery, unfortunately, that remains completely out of our control and your experience is not at all common. It definitely warrants a complaint and a query. If they had you go all the way to some depot to pick up your package, why in the name of everything good and decent could they have not just had you pay your duties and taxes right then and there??? I recommend you call FedEx to file a complaint about their Shoddy delivery service.
We use FedEx for our international ground shipments because they provide state-of-the-art tracking. Though your Canadian broker, ‘FedEx Trade Networks’, may have higher brokerage fees, we often find USPS has higher shipping fees yet lacks a sophisticated tracking system. In the end, when all comes out in the wash, they both usually end up within 10 buck of each other.
By no means were we trying to state anything other than the facts. FedEx claimed you did not pay and came after us. Our auction states customs and duties are your responsibility. Four months go by and we never hear from you asking why you never had to pay your duties and taxes even though the auction states you must. We get a bill from FedEx to pay them for you because they state collection has been unsuccessful. What else are we supposed to think?
We would like you to know customs duties and tax avoidance is a fairly common occurrence when shipping to Canada. I have already had to write 15 other letters similar to yours this year alone and we do not ship that much to Canada. The funny thing is, this is the first time anyone has replied stating they never received a bill. You are truly the first one and as such, I am not accustomed to receiving a reply like yours. Everyone else has replied with their tail between their legs (a few grumble about the brokerage fees) but that’s the worst it has ever been, until now.
Thank you in advance for taking care of your tax obligation to your country by submitting your payment via PayPal as you had mentioned below. The additional $25 fee was meant to provoke an immediate reply more than anything else. Believe me, before we added that to our letter, replies would take 3 to 4 times longer or not happen at all.
Though your generosity to include PayPal fees with your payment is appreciated, it is impossible to provide exact proof because PayPal charges an indeterminable ‘across the border’ fee on top of their normal transaction fee. What we do know is the PayPal fee on $130 USD is $3.16 according to our Xcel cost matrix spreadsheet. My best guess as to the amount of additional fees to ‘cross the border’ would be an additional 2 or 3 more bucks.
To answer your question, the $130.35 is indeed in Canadian dollars which translates into 126.68 USD. However, if you were to send $130.35 USD, that would seem to cover any additional PayPal fees, though it might be a little short.
I feel now that you know what I know about our experience in dealing with customers avoiding their customs bills, that my letter was as polite as it could possibly be and still tell it like it is. If you do not feel that way, I apologize and ask you to think how I might feel when faced with the liability of paying taxes and duties imposed by a Government that is not even mine.
Regards,
Mike Molitoris
Client Relations Director
everythinghome
Direct: 612-790-1261
From: etp PayPal [mailto:paypal@electricteaparty.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 10:37 PM
To: everythinghome
Subject: Re: ***Your recent Sharp XR-10X purchase from everythinghome on eBay***
Mike,
Thanks for the quick reply and the details. From the note on the scan, it looks like FedEx sent the bill, FAQ sheet, etc. in one envelope, and then gave up instantly, sending the bill back to you. That really is poor business practice - post gets lost all the time, and they should at least have phoned to see if I got the letter.
As for complaining to FedEx - believe me, I did. All I got was, "well, we're sorry, but that's the way it is." Canada Post, Purolator, and even UPS and DHL will make at least three attempts to deliver a package over three business days, and are open to scheduling a delivery if needed. FedEx gave me no such option, even though I asked. This is apparently how they regularly do business, and I doubt any formal complaint would change their minds.
I have ordered items from across the border many times in the past, including items as big as video game consoles and laptop computers from places as far away as Hong Kong. Whenever anyone has shipped via a courier company, it has been nothing but hassle and heartbreak. Whenever anyone has shipped via Priority Post (or local equivalent), I have been provided with satisfactory tracking numbers, affordable insurance rates, and Canada Post has made every effort to deliver my packages intact and on time. If there is money to be paid on items arriving through the Mail, they collect payment when you collect your item. What's more, the highest border/customs fee I have had to pay for an item was an Xbox 360 console from the US, which came to a whopping $13.43. Fair enough, GST was paid on the sale, and Microsoft probably had some sort of Duty arrangement built in, so those items can't really be complained about here. But brokerage? What even IS brokerage? If that's what it costs to ship an item, surely it should be part of the original shipping price. What a shambles.
The PayPal fees look in line with what I recall from my most recent eBay sales. Again, I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, but I still maintain the whole affair could have been avoided if you had used the established and trusted Government-run postal service rather than money-grubbing free-enterprise couriers. As stated I will send you the money as soon as I get paid this week.
- Adrian
On Sep 18, 2007, at 9:50 PM, everythinghome wrote:
Hi Adrian,
Thank you. I agree with the way FedEx handles things in your delivery area. You may like to know we’ve had other customers in other areas of your country treated differently and additional delivery attempts have been made.
Brokerage has nothing to due with shipping rates. It is a fee assessed by the broker (in this case FedEx Trade Networks) for facilitating your order across the border. The idea is to expedite delivery by providing a service that gets the item from the border officials, via clearing the paperwork, and on to your home. This prevents every customer from physically getting to the port of entry to pick up their item. These ports of entry can be hundreds of miles away. USPS and your Post must have a more ‘built in’ system and work more closely with your government.
I can appreciate your frustration when importing goods via courier.
Thanks for your understanding and we will look forward to receiving payment as you had stated below.
Regards,
Mike Molitoris
Client Relations Director
everythinghome
Direct: 612-790-1261