We have been writing a lot about new charges imposed on shoppers who have the temerity to buy on websites based outside the EU and one of our more recent stories has prompted a reader called Aideen to get in touch.
Revenue confirmed last week that online shoppers who buy from outside the EU will have to pay a fresh charge of €2 per item from November 1st.
The new Union Handling Fee is on top of a €3 charge per item that was imposed in the summer.
The charges and fees are being imposed by the EU, but delivery companies will have a legal responsibility to collect them if the levies have not been paid during checkout on the online store.
RM Block
The charge is intended to cover the increased costs incurred by customs authorities as a result of the huge growth of ecommerce over the last number of years. It will apply to all goods, regardless of their value, once a seller ships them to Ireland from outside the EU.
And of course, the delivery companies will also charge fees of their own to collect the money. An Post, for example, has an administrative charge of €6.95.
The net effect of this can be pretty savage. A person who buys three distinct items on a website based outside the EU for a total cost of a tenner will end up having to pay €31.95 when all the charges are added to the mix.
It is in this context Aideen contacted us. She was less than pleased when faced with charges for a product she didn’t even buy.
“I’m sure you can imagine my chagrin upon receiving a customs duty notification from An Post just last week, in an envelope marked with bold, red and capital letters alerting to me the urgency of opening it,” she writes.
“What did I buy that originated outside of the EU? Might I have ordered Korean skincare direct from Korea? Hardly. I make a point of not shopping with Temu or Shein so it couldn’t be anything of that nature. Was I getting a present from an American relative for absolutely no reason?”
No, no she was not.
When Aideen logged into her An Post account “to try and shed some light on the situation (I would never scan a QR code as I always heed your warning about scammers), it was a thank you present from Vanity Fair in the US”. She adds: “Via Amsterdam, they were sending me a free tote for taking out a digital subscription.”
Aideen then remembered she had wanted to read one particular article in the US magazine. ”I had already cancelled my 30-day free trial by the time the customs notification was put through my door,” she confirms.
She looked closely at the notification and “was left bemused at the breakdown of charges”.
On top of the €3 charge imposed earlier this year, there was, she says: “No excise duty but a value added tax of €2.83 (again this was an unsolicited FREE tote bag), and a mysterious €6.95 handling charge from An Post.”
It brought the total to €12.78. Aideen acknowledges this would have been €14.78 if the parcel arrived after November 1st.
She marvels at the fact that she would have been faced with charges of close to €15 for a free tote, “and at a price the publishing company surely wouldn’t have paid its own wholesalers for”.
Aideen says: “Out of curiosity, I wondered where such a canvas receptacle might have been manufactured. Likely China or India ‘depending on the specific promotional batch or production run’, the internet tells me.”
She declined the charges and says the tote bag is on its way back to the sender.
