Morning all,

Anyone know what’s going on here!?

I recently bought a KS Lev 27.2 seat post from Jenson USA as they are difficult to find in this size in the UK. I paid $334 for it to the retailer who arranged to post it via UPS to my wife’s work address.

My wife’s work have now received an invoice from UPS for $334. Same as the amount I have already paid.

Apart from her work address being the delivery address they obviously have nothing to do with the order. Infact, they didn’t even know it was to be sent to them, nor did my wife!

Help?!

You will have to pay import duty, VAT and a handling fee to UPS – they’ve sent the bill to the only address they have. That sounds a bit high, though – VAT is 20%, duty is around 20% too.

I’m sure they’ll bill you for the duty payments, but not the full amount – are you sure they’ve read it right ?

The invoice that have sent is actually a copy of the invoice from Jenson USA to me. UPS are asking for clearance instructions against this invoice

The invoice says the delivery address and the sold to address are the same (wife’s work) which is incorrect. It was sold to and paid for by me.

I was expecting some costs to be paid. I’ll get onto them

Check any duty/VAT demands carefully. I bought some spares for my Litespeed for $60 plus $40 postage (yes, that’s what I thought as well!!)
I was then presented with a demand for VAT ( duty not payable on this amount) on $145 by UPS as the collection agent because Litespeed had put the value of the goods at $100, and UPS had added “their standard charge for carriage when not specified by sender”. You have to include carriage and insurance costs to calculate the taxes due.
Three phone calls and an email with the original invoice later this was sorted out. It was Litespeed’s fault for incorrectly labelling the goods

A very useful site to calculate true taxes ( which I used to check UPS calculations) is:
http://www.dutycalculator.com/new-import-duty-and-tax-calculation/