Email said, “Additionally, we’ve simplified the shopping experience by making product prices now all inclusive. The value price on products remains unchanged and no additional taxes, duties, or applicable fees will be collected at checkout.”
So it seems that TW buyers will have to pay duty even if their orders would, under the previous pricing, have been duty-free. The new prices undoubtedly also include a fee for the so-called free shipping (which I figure was always part of the original pricing). Does anyone see this as advantageous to the customer?
There might be no point ordering if you can get similar items in Taiwan. Which I guess is the point of this change (government wants people to buy locally)
Ordered on the night of the 7th. Arrived on the morning of the 15th. Pretty fast.
Now for the weird part.
My wife got a message on the EZ app today asking her to confirm. She confirmed without paying much attention because she knew we were expecting something.
Turns out that the thing she confirmed was for nails…price 1999. So no duty payable.
We ordered from iherb ……3500 odd. The box says we paid 979 in duty and none of the numbers on the box match with the app.
Is someone using her account to order stuff?
If so, why no message in the app concerning our Iherb order?
I’m just checking current prices on iHerb compared to what I screen captured just 10 days ago, and the prices are 30% - 50% higher over just that period.
$8.82 → $13.09. ($8.17 in December)
$17.41 → $23.61
My experience ordering from them several months ago was good, but this seems like price gouging.
Has anyone been hit with the customs fees for ordering over 2000NTD?
What is the delivery time like for recent iHerb orders? (I used Luckyvitamin for the first and last time, a few months ago, and it took several weeks to arrive, spending almost a month in Germany after leaving the US relatively quickly.)
They include the fee in the price now. What you see is what you will pay.
I’m getting messages every day about how certain brands are on sale. Seems like their business plan at the moment is increase prices 30 percent and then give you a discount code saying 20 percent off.
Beating a dead horse here, but here is a comparison of one product before and after iHerb got “numba 1ed” by customs.
February 2021
Eden Foods, Organic Garbanzo Beans, 16 oz (454 g)
183 NT
Today - iHerb website:
329 NT
Doing a bit of detective work, if you browse the page with US delivery, the price roughly halves, so clearly there is some Taiwan fudge factor in all the prices, as others have noted.
My friend did an order mid-Nov and swears he paid no import duties. Not sure how?
I had him get three things for me, and I checked prices just now of then vs now and prices are basically the same, so they weren’t including the 30% into the price back then.
The same happened to me! I ordered some things last October and then about a month after, iHerb emailed me to tell me that they had made a mistake and had to refund me the import duties. However, when I was filling my cart to see if they would still charge me the same old import fee, that hadn’t changed (it was still high). So I assume their modus operandi is overcharging just in case and then refunding customers.
Questions about how iHerb works these days: so based on the posts above, do “Duties & Taxes” always appear in the order summary, even if they’re not supposed to, and then later you’ll maybe get a refund?
I ask because there’s a little information note beside Duties and Taxes that brings up how [the semi-yearly first six] orders under NTD 2,000 don’t have duty. But even if I lower the total well below NT$2,000, I’m still getting a few hundred in duties there. Is that going to be refunded later?
They’re not exactly making it easy to figure out the prices for this … right now there’s an offer for 20% off orders over USD$80, and I’ve always avoided orders that big because I don’t want to pay duty, but if I’m paying duty anyway, well, why bother trying to keep below NT$2,000.
