customs fees....whats the REAL story????

[coldworld]

I go on several other sites and I have seen posts about ups brokerage fees being outrageous, and usually it seems to be the canadians who are SCREAMING!! Are these fees really ups taking advantage, or are fedex and dhl fees in the same ballpark. I thought I read somewhere where the post office doesnt have to charge these fees, for some reason or another. Seems as if nobody at ups knows what these fees are for or why they are so high. If you google the topic there are MANY customers that wont use us for the cross border stuff, and on top of it others who wont use us period mostly because of the high claim issues. These seem to be 2 large issues with customers, especially the ebayers and other related sites. Does anybody know the real story behind these fees. I know ups has one of, if not, the largest custom brokerage business in the world, so it seems they have the technology and other "business related" things to do the border stuff cost effective...so whats up?? How much business is ups loosing from the damage side of things also???

[barnyard]

My understanding is that UPS bought a brokerage service in Canada and uses that to expedite border crossings. It was also explained to me that if UPS did not use the brokerage, it would be free, but could take longer.

It seems to be an issue with stuff to or from Canada only. Which also seems odd to me. I thought Nafta was supposed to allow for the free exchange of goods between the US and Canada. From what I have seen, Canada is the biggest PITA to ship to of almost anywhere.....

TB

[david cassin]

i work for ups in ireland,ups introduced a brokerage fee 2 years ago long after dhl,fedex,tnt all had started charging customers.
basically its a fee we charge for using our tan (trader account number) when outlaying vat & duties to customs.customs charges ups for coming down to examine pkgs and charge us everytime we send a customs entry down electronically.an entry is completed on each item prealerted coming into ireland bewtween 22 euro and beyond.only vat registered companies are exempt when the value is 254.00 euro or less once the duty that the goods would be liable were not costing 11 euro in duties.
hope this explains where we have a brokerage fee.
ups all over europe also introduced this charge and its on the website
under customs charges/extra fees.

[coldworld]

I know fedex and dhl have fees but ups is expensive, are the fees just to cover expenses, or is it a cash cow?

[Hubber]

Seriously I work with the Brokers of my HUB alot, and people could just clear it themselves. The thing is that customers are stupid and don't care or know how it works! About the crossing of borders for a parcel takes time, energy and knowledge about the systems in place. I am my own broker when I brought stuff from the US to another country and it took me 3 hours to do it. Normally the line at the airport's custom is 1 hour!

If these customers are so cheap and want to do it themselves, UPS brokerage actually let them do it. The thing is it take time!!!!! and it's not all fee it's some part of it it's tax!

Stupid customers....

[david cassin]

some of our customers ask us to hand over paperwork for an alternative agent to clear.we charge 22.00 euro for this .
but all the companies airfreight/courier also have these charges.
when i worked for ups's agent here in dublin 20 years ago we had agency fees,handling fees for airfreight shpts/seafreight shpts.
we were inturn charged by who the goods came in through (airline or handling agent) so we in turn had to charge the customer.
dhl/fedex tnt as i said earlier all charge the brokerage fees.

[david cassin]

also i should have added customs don't like the ordinary joe soap going up to clear goods themselves as the customers start asking "why am i paying vat/duty etc" si they in turn direct them to an agent who clears the goods and can charge anything up to 50 euro per customs entry.

[brownmonster]

I thought NAFTA was for the free flow of jobs to Mexico.

[UpstateNYUPSer]

My center is about 1/2 hour south of the Canadian border and our center services a lot of the brokerage houses which are set up along the border. Yes, UPS did buy a brokerage company, Transborder, which has brokerage houses all along the Canadian border. The former Transborder bldg in Champlain, NY, is now called UPS SCS, which stands for Supply Chain Solutions. These brokerage houses are supposed to process shipments both going to and from the States (Etates Unis) so that they will arrive in a timely manner. As far as the brokerage and/or customs fees, I have no idea how they are calculated but I do know that they are separate fees so, yes, shipments can be processed without using the brokerage houses but they do tend to take longer as these brokerage firms have relationships with Customs (Douanes) which gives them priority in processing their shipments. This is why our local Mail Boxes Etc has quite a few Canadian customers because this provides them with a US address for their shipments. Now, you may be saying, that's great, but how do they get the stuff across the border? Well, they simply unpack everything, destroy all receipts/paperwork, stuff the trunks of their cars and use some of the lesser-travelled border crossings or even some of the unmanned crossings which operate on the honor system of self-reporting to the nearest manned crossing. When they shop at our mall, they take everything out of the packaging or put on the new clothes/shoes, and head for home. NAFTA encouraged free trade but did not do away with duty.

[Pollocknbrown]

Thats right Upstate, when i go to the mall nearest to the US canadian border here, i see trash everywhere, bags, tags, everywhere, garbage bins overflowing because so many ppl throwing stuff out. Its nice since it helps the economy around here with the sales tax but the traffic and mess around the mall is a little ridiculous.

[UpstateNYUPSer]

Yeah, the MBE I was talking about is one of my first delivery and my last pickup stops and as I was making the P/U last night this Canadian couple was doing just what I described, unloading 3-4 boxes and stuffing the contents in to their minivan and, unfortunately, leaving all of their trash for the poor MBE clerk to take care of.

Before this run I had a rural route which ran right along the border and there was one stop which, while it had a US address, was actually in Canada. I would park the pkg car in the US, take the pkg, walk around the road block in to Canada, deliver the pkg and then be on my way. There was also a local barbershop where Canadians would have their pkgs delivered to. Several others had PO boxes while others would have them addressed to the local hardware store.

[buddy1]

i work as a package car driver (sprinter bx van p47 type) the feedback we get from customers is that they do nor mind the import charges (vat/duty) but hate paying the ups brokerage charge 13.50 euro of which 2.84 tax is added to that as well so the customer is paying a double amt of tax..it delays me on avg of 15/20 mins for a cod stop as we have to explain to customers the charges..there must be an easier way of coll vat/duty charges ????

[DS]

In order to avoid the brokerage charges,anyone buying anything on ebay or any other US website has to insist that it is shipped ANY other way than Standard. If you use Expedited,3 day select,express, or ups saver,
UPS, pays the brokerage charges for you ! All you have to pay is the GST which is 6% of the purchase price.Occaisionally there is duty involved,but this is very rare.The hard part is talking the shipper(who usually pays the shipping charges) into paying the extra 2 or 3 bucks to upgrade the service from standard.

[coldworld]

If you google ups brokerage charges there are tons of sites where customers are flaming mad. But from reading these it sounds like more likely they are just misinformed about the whole customs process in general. Also, with the post office, Ive heard most cross border pkgs as being marked as "gift". Does the post office have the same kinds of fees, or it it totally different?