And if I am getting ripped off, what do I do about it?
My mom was in town a few weekends ago. We were at Sogo and she offered to buy me shoes. Being a size 13, I knew we were in for a challenge. Didn’t find anything, so she said she would send me some from back home.
I got the package today. She was nice enough to include a few shirts as well. The value of everything was $95 USD (About $3122 NT, according to google’s conversion rate). Tax I had to pay to get it: $4112 NT
What … the… :loco: :loco: :loco:
There was almost nothing I could do at the time. I paid DHL and got my stuff. But is this normal? What do I do if it’s not?
I think you’ll find that that amount must have been for shipping and duties, if your mom already paid the shipping fees on her side and the whole NT$4k is purely for import duty, then something went very wrong… shoes and T-Shirts worth US$95 are not taxed at over 100% import duty, no way no how… express couriers like DHL will charge by volume or by weight, whichever is more expensive and a box big enough for a pair of size 13’s and a few other bits and pieces could at a stretch run you in the region NT$4k for expedited DHL shipping with duties included, but even then that’s pricey… call DHL and knock some heads together…
Plasmatron is about on the mark with what he has said, i also would have to assume that your mother did not pay the DHL costs in the US hence why the you got the 4k+ bill this end.
Curious if your mother wrote any value on the DHL forms. Next time get her to write “personal possessions” and a dollar value of $0. They won’t charge you for shipping your own clothes over.
Plasmatron, taxes can easily be as much as you paid for the items.
Does DHL allow payment on delivery? Doubt it and if they did they would have told your mother in which case she would likely have told you.
I had some items shipped back to my parents years ago via courier service and they also had to pay more in taxes than the stuff was worth.
AFAIK the tax is based on the price for the items plus shipping charges. And if I am right there is nothing you can do.
BTW, in the future for stuff like this, don’t use the private services (DHL, FedEx, UPS etc.) for shipping; not only are their shipping prices exorbitant, but when they go through Customs they are also MUCH more likely to be closely inspected and assessed duties.
If you use the USPS (or other gov’t post office) the goods tend to go through without being opened, especially if the value is declared below US$85 or so. I tend to look for merchants who are willing to use the government post.
I guess that’s the OP’s answer right there… unless the DHL customs monkeys have reason to ignore the declared US$95 value (was is declared?) there is no way that duties could amount to NT$4000…
This was shipped to my work and there aren’t a lot of people here that speak really good English, so it was hard to communicate to the staff what the problem was. Someone finally was able to help me. At first, they thought the declared value was the cost of shipping and that I owed it. But someone finally figured out the problem.
They called DHL and were told that was the import tax. So I posted something on here and immediately called DHL. I got a lady that didn’t speak much English, but I was able to give her a cell #.
The lady actually took the time to look into it and said the account number that was written down by my mom was invalid (she didn’t pay cash…she has an account with them), so it never got charged. I’m wondering how it got this far, but at least I know I can contact DHL in the US later today when they open and ask them what their take is on the situation.
In all, sounds like a headache. I never had a problem with stuff being shipped at the post office. Think I’ll go that route.
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Puppet -
For future reference, I have found the Post Office to be very, shall we say, flexible, in resolving matters such as this.[/quote]
As long as you do not use the EMS Postal service I guess taiwan Post is very good …
For a package we needed to send to Oman, it took 30 days before it got there (assuming they had to find Oman on the world map)