Paying customs fees on an item being returned - can I get a refund for those fees?

[dinomitesales]

Hypothetical scenario:

Say I sell an item to someone in the US (i.e. shipping from Canada to the US), and they want to return it for whatever reason. Let's say this is a fairly expensive object - $200 CAD. The buyer mails it back to me, but it gets stopped at Canadian customs and has customs/duty fees applied to it. In order to retrieve my item from my local post office, I need to pay these customs fees.

Is there any way to get a refund for these customs fees from CBSA? This is an item that originated in Canada and is simply returning to Canada. I want to say that "yes, I am eligible for a refund of these fees", but after googling certain keywords I can't seem to find a specific answer to my question. For some reason I seem to recall a form that could be filled out and sent in to request a refund for fees applied to return merchandise. But I also may just be totally out to lunch.

[pierrelebel · Accepted solution]

Yes you are eligible for a full refund of taxes (and duty if applicable) paid when the item was returned and received.

Use the claim form attached to the package (back of the Canada Customs Invoice) and explain the item was owned by you and returned to you for refund.  Attach a copy of the original invoice to American buyer and copy of PayPal payment received from the buyer.,

Allow eight weeks for the refund to be processed.

[momcqueen]

Your buyer should have ben warned or asked by the shipper prior to shipment that the parcel being returned to you was a Customer Return. That would prevent this form happening. 

Does this link provide any assistance? http://www.cbsa.gc.ca/import/courier/crp-prio-eng.html

[marnotom!]

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@mjwl2006 wrote:

Your buyer should have ben warned or asked by the shipper prior to shipment that the parcel being returned to you was a Customer Return.

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The buyer can also indicate on the customs form that the package contains merchandise being returned to the vendor.  While this may not necessarily prevent an overzealous CBSA employee from assessing the item for taxes and duty, it does leave more of a paper trail in case a claim has to be filed.

[momcqueen]

Yes. The difficulty is that this would never occur to a majority of casual online shoppers. They'd have to be told in advance to do so, or asked at the counter when they dropped it off by the shipper whether it was a return.

[dinomitesales]

Thanks Pierre, I thought so. Good to know it's a relatively straightforward process.

As for mjwl2006's statement "Your buyer should have been warned or asked by the shipper prior to shipment that the parcel being returned to you was a Customer Return", I'm not sure how commonplace that is. I recently started working as a postal clerk in one of the Canada Post retail outlets and asking customers questions like that is not something we are told/trained to do.

My initial query was spurred from a lady (eBay seller) that was picking up a package and had this exact same scenario; some jewellery was being returned to her and it was assessed about $40 worth of duty. She was not happy with the situation. I informed her that I was fairly certain there was a way to get a refund for those fees based on the circumstances and encouraged her to look around on the internet. Now I know for sure and can better inform any customers in a similar situation.

[momcqueen]

Interesting. The people who work at my postal counter regularly ask any customer who comes in with a pre-paid label whether or not it's a merchandise return.

[momcqueen]

(And the handling fee of $9.95 paid to CPC to collect duty is not normally part of the amount refunded.)

[marnotom!]

The $9.95 will be refunded if the item is determined not to be subject to taxes and duty and it was not sent by Express mail.

http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/publications/dm-md/d6/d6-2-6-eng.html

[dinomitesales]

The pre-paid label is a completely different scenario. Many people come in with return merchandise to major retailers such as Amazon or the HSN, but they will always tell you that the item is a return (because they don't want to pay!). Also, we can tell just by looking at the pre-printed label, as it will say it's for return purposes, and look much different than anything an individual can print off of Canada Post/PayPal. There is indeed a separate button and separate process for handling such returns on the point-of-sale computer.

My initial scenario was describing an international eBay return; I would think there are very few eBay sellers that have a "return services" account with Canada Post, where Canada Post would just bill them every time someone showed up with one of their labels. And this wouldn't work at all with an international return sent through USPS. As postal clerks, we aren't going to ask every person that comes in with an international package "Is this item being returned as a result of an online sale?", as the people doing so are a very small percentage of customers.

[marnotom!]

Why can't the seller advise the buyer to indicate on the customs form that the item is a return?

[momcqueen]

That is what should have been done. The seller, or ebay. 

[momcqueen]

As postal clerks, we aren't going to ask every person that comes in with an international package "Is this item being returned as a result of an online sale?", as the people doing so are a very small percentage of customers.

That is precisely what the people working at my local Canada Post authorized dealer counter do. I assumed thusly that it was standard procedure. I will ask about it when next I go and see if it was part of their training to do so or a practise they developed on their own. 

[dinomitesales]

The only thing we are told/trained to say to every customer is "Does this parcel contain any dangerous goods"? And even then, the majority of postal clerks will never bother unless something seems odd or suspicious about a parcel. I am in the same city as you, so it's likely your postal clerk underwent the same in-person and extensive online training as I did (unless your postal clerk has held their position for many years, in which case, best practices might have changed).

And of course, any seller authorizing a return for a buyer should tell them to indicate it is return merchandise on the customs label. Whether or not the buyer is going to understand what you mean, or remember to do so when going to the post office, is another question entirely. In my experience, the vast majority of people buying items online (and the majority of the population in general) have very little knowledge regarding how the postal service works, never mind trying to fill them in on customs regulations.

[momcqueen]

That is very interesting to me. I don't think anyone has ever asked me the dangerous good question. Nor have I heard it asked of others while I stand in line. I wonder as to the discrepancy as I do very much expect every employee would be given the same training but perhaps it depends on which person is doing the training. At my counter, the senior staff person has been there for, like, 20 years. And she's the one to do training of new employees. 

[dinomitesales]

Yeah, it very well may be an age gap sort of thing. My manager is in his late 20s. And I'm sure the online training didn't exist when your postal clerk began her position. More senior employees may insist on best practices that are comfortable or correct to them, even though they may differ slightly from the official Canada Post retail operations manual (which is totally fine in most cases).

The online training is pretty extensive - 37 online modules with quizzes that take about 20 hours or so to complete. The very first one is a 45 minute module (the longest of any of them) on recognizing dangerous goods, and best practices when it is discovered that someone is trying to mail something that could be classified as dangerous goods. The first thing mentioned in that module is that the first thing you should ask every customer is whether or not their package contains dangerous goods. We are also supposed to have a stock of the "Canada Post Dangerous Goods" pamphlets on hand to pass out to anyone with questions.

However, even with that being said, my manager never asks anyone this question when working, and didn't instruct me to do so during initial in-person training. I don't even think we have any of those pamphlets in stock at our location.

[pocomocomputing]

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@dinomitesales wrote:

Yeah, it very well may be an age gap sort of thing. My manager is in his late 20s. And I'm sure the online training didn't exist when your postal clerk began her position. More senior employees may insist on best practices that are comfortable or correct to them, even though they may differ slightly from the official Canada Post retail operations manual (which is totally fine in most cases).

The online training is pretty extensive - 37 online modules with quizzes that take about 20 hours or so to complete. The very first one is a 45 minute module (the longest of any of them) on recognizing dangerous goods, and best practices when it is discovered that someone is trying to mail something that could be classified as dangerous goods. The first thing mentioned in that module is that the first thing you should ask every customer is whether or not their package contains dangerous goods. We are also supposed to have a stock of the "Canada Post Dangerous Goods" pamphlets on hand to pass out to anyone with questions.

However, even with that being said, my manager never asks anyone this question when working, and didn't instruct me to do so during initial in-person training. I don't even think we have any of those pamphlets in stock at our location.

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Off topic. LOL, I find it some irony in your post when you mention the dangerous goods question from your training and your eBay id is dinomitesales.

[momcqueen]

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/manitoba/illegal-venomous-snakes-vipers-mail-canada-post-manitoba...

Speaking of dangerous goods... My poisonous snake shipment was intercepted, drat it all. Haha. I cannot imagine being on the receiving end of something like this.

[dinomitesales]

Haha, I just like dinosaurs and enjoyed the pun 😛
Dinosaurs are not a dangerous good, at least in the current geologic Era.

Red flags may have been raised had I chosen "dynamitesales", however...

[reallynicestamps]

Welp, I'm officially old

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v19PpD5uqL0

C'mon 70 is the new 40, right? 50? 60? Oh poot.