DHL is charging me taxes?! WTH

[xen999]

So I purchased some items from a seller in the US for the whopping sum of 54.15 CAD plus 24.53 USD for shipping through EIS. The parcel goes to the hub, hangs there for more than a week as per usual..., then finally gets moving again through DHL and is on its way to me in QC. Today, I receive an email from DHL charging me 12.70 CAD for fees and taxes... What the hell is this?? I thought EIS charged everything in order to get to you internationally, so why is DHL now asking for me for more?? Why is it the more I use eBay the more I feel robbed? I *NEVER* know how much I'm going to end up spending and it's always more than I think, it's incredibly frustrating.

[ands_3116]

DHL will Request taxes and brokerage fees before it gets to Customs, don't pay... Let your package go through Canada Customs, you may not have to pay any fees. It's just another way for DHL to make more money.

[millana-dee]

Boy, do I hear you. I'm so sick and tired of all of these hidden fees. Especially when there is no rhyme or reason to them. I can buy 10 books, all weighing the same, all costing the same. Nine of those books will come to me without added costs and one will have all the add on fees. You never know which one, or why it is not treated the same way the others were treated.

We are lead to believe that global shipping covers these costs. And that when we pay the insane amount of money we pay for delivery, it will be the end of our payments. Only to be notified, oh by the way, you can't have your item until you pay this or that for it.

It is a complete guessing game and it's not fair to Canadians. What are we suppose to do, ask eBay, every time we decide to make a purchase, if extra charges will be added on. 
And why does this only happen here at eBay. It does not happen at Amazon or Etsy, or any of the other places we shop.

What happens if you can't afford to pay these extra costs because you didn't budget for them.

now the delivery companies are asking for costs before they even hit the border. It is solely their estimate. And if they are wrong, do we get refunded the charge. The answer to that is no.

Why cant sellers just ship directly to us, because we are being treated very unfairly when it comes to this shipping program. There is nothing good about it. Your package travels around the US, while you sit patiently waiting for its arrival. Products from China get here quicker than those mailed from the US. And you never know, until they are at your doorstep, if you will be charged extra for "border fees". 
It's just not right and the worse part is, is that there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.

[fh991586]

Global Shipping (GSP) doesn't exist anymore.

Whenever you buy from outside Canada, you can expect to have to pay taxes on the purchase when it goes through customs, plus a handling fee. If you don't have the provision to do so, then international purchases are not for you.

[johnnesbitt]

Sadly, the $800 exemption is for goods entering the US (the de minimis rule).    For Canada, the formal exemption is $20, though I have found that the 'actual' threshold for CBSA to charge duty/tax is somewhere in the range of $60-80.

[isotack]

This exactly.  DHL is scamming people hoping that they will scare you into paying their hostage fee.  **bleep** DHL of the 30 or 40 ebay single purchases of used goods imported from the US with an average of $50 CAD per order ...10 were sent through DHL and guess what, they sent a notification for three of them "may incurr taxes"  along with the $10 or more fee.  "Pay us or else it may get held up"...I ignored them and the delivery went through no problem.  Every other delivery from other carriers has been fine...nobody but **bleep**ing DHL does this.

[isotack]

Exactly...it's a DHL scam!

[jayracz]

My purchase agreement with the seller was USPS shipping to Canada. Not USPS to the hub and DHL from there. eBay's hub has broken my agreement with the seller. In doing so they have changed the deal. They are now responsible for this mess. The fact that the eIS system failed to catch it was a international sale to begin with is also on eBay. This is not a safe buying experience they try to sell people.

[marnotom!]

@jayracz, it's been a challenge to get the full story behind your purchase as you've been posting dribs and drabs about it on various boards.  My understanding is that you made an $80 (Canadian dollars?  US dollars?) purchase on eBay using the app and the stated shipping method was a USPS domestic shipping method that has no equivalent for shipping internationally.  The app, for whatever reason, showed the wrong shipping method but presumably the correct shipping price to Canada, and the item was forwarded from the eBay International Shipping hub in suburban Chicago instead of shipping more directly to your location.

I'm assuming that, like many Canadian buyers making purchases from the US, you were hoping for direct USPS shipping to Canada as mailed items processed by CBSA often make it through without taxes and duty (if applicable) being assessed and charged to the importer (buyer).  What many buyers don't realize is that there's officially a tax/duty-free limit on the value of mailed imports of a measly $20.  Couriered items from the US have a slightly higher limit, but it's not as high as C$80.  Even if your seller did use USPS for shipping to Canada, the possibility existed of your item being hit with a charge for taxes and processing.

If I'm understanding your other posts correctly, you ended up getting charged C$25 in taxes and processing fees by DHL for your item.  I don't know what province you're in and what currency you quoted for the item price, but a C$80 item sent to Ontario by mail is subject to charges of at least C$10.40 for HST and C$9.99 for Canada Post to collect that amount from you and remit it to CBSA on your behalf, for a total of C$20.39, not too far off from what DHL charged you.

I get it, even though there's that note on eBay listings that international shipments are subject to various import fees, we tend to assume they don't apply to us because CBSA is so lax about enforcing regulations for casual (informal) imports sent by mail, but in most cases they do apply, and we should never assume that items sent by USPS are going to be free of customs charges upon receipt.  For what it's worth, I once had an eBay item sent by USPS that was assessed by CBSA for an amount higher than the declared amount because whoever inspected it didn't believe the amount the seller had written on the customs form, even though it was the purchase price.  Weird but true.

[millana-dee]

Hey there,

I can totally relate to you. In the last month every order that has gone through DHL shipping, on behalf of eBay, has duty tax plus some type of border crosssing fee. 
Ihave been ordering books that are under 50 dollars and iam still getting these charges. All these charges are over and beyond the steel shipping price that I have already paid. No other place on the web does this.

i have tried to ask eBay to explain these charges to me. They have never once gave me a direct answer, and when pushed for a direct answer they have, either closed the chat window, or hung up.

i think eBay needs to become transparent with their international shipping costs, how they assess the cost of shipping in the first place. And how and why they offer two shipping options, one with taxes paid at checkout, and one without. And how do you choose what option you would like. There is nowhere to do this. And finally why are there suddenly all these new border fees on items we have ordered over and over again. Since when do you order a book from the untied states and get get charged duties and border fees. And what are we actually paying with the money that we are initially putting out for shipping.

 Because I have seen, many times, identical items on eBay, with a shipping cost difference of thirty dollars. Or of three hankies costing 25.00.  And it goes on and on.

There is nothing we can do because they don't have to answer to us

[millana-dee]

Totally don't agree with this, at all. Canadians are exploited when it comes to shipping charges, pure and simple.

[marnotom!]

---

@millana-dee wrote:

Totally don't agree with this, at all. Canadians are exploited when it comes to shipping charges, pure and simple.

---

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with here, @millana-dee.  It is what it is.  By the way, it's not shipping charges we're talking about, but import charges.  eBay isn't charging these fees.  DHL is.  That's one reason why you're not getting much assistance from eBay customer service.  Express your concerns to DHL and your MP.

I suspect that your items forwarded through the eBay International Shipping service are being handled by DHL Global Post. As such, they're considered mailed casual imports and are subject to the C$20 tax/duty-free limit.

Any postal import with a declared value above that twenty loonie can be assessed taxes and duty, if applicable.  If the item's country of origin can't be determined and it's dutiable if it's from somewhere other than a CUSMA country, you're going to see a duty charge as well.  And of course, there's DHL's processing charges on top of that, which I suspect is the real annoyance here.

If you feel your item was incorrectly assessed duty and taxes, you can file an appeal with Canada Border Services.  Keep in mind that you won't get DHL or Canada Post's processing charges back, just the taxes and duty you were erroneously charged.  Link to more information here:

https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/import/postal-postale/dispute-contestation-eng.html

If you haven't seen these charges from other sites, either the merchandise is being shipped from a Canadian warehouse and/or the vendor has figured out a way to sneak the taxes into the item's selling price.  I once found a website where the prices being charged to Canadians were considerably higher than those being charged to Americans for the same items, and a bit of number crunching on my end suggested that they were adding an estimate for import charges to the price of the items.

Finally, many countries now have e-commerce sites such as eBay charge the buyer taxes due on an imported item in a manner similar to how eBay charges Canadians buying from Canadian sellers, such as those in the EU, Australia, and even the United States.  For some reason, our government hasn't gone in this direction, at least not yet.  Sometimes you'll find listings for items forwarded by eBay International Shipping where the taxes (and even duty) are charged to Canadians at Checkout, but that's being handled by the carrier, not eBay.