It's not that complicated.
They don't pay the tariffs. The person receiving the package does. Many carriers will slap you with the tariff charge, a brokerage fee, and then send you to collections if you don't pay it.
The vendors don't care because they're making the sale and the tariffs are the other person's responsibility. Caveat emptor.
The person you are replying to isn't claiming that the seller pays the tariffs, they are saying that it's not in the seller's interest to notify buyers of the tariff charge because it's essentially free anti-tariff messaging once buyers are hit with the sudden fees.
but in the process all their customers will have been burned buying something from Temu and many will be wary of buying in the future even if the tariff situation improves etc?
That's certainly how it worked out in Europe, where the processing fee was much less (€5-10 usually).
Since 2021 foreign merchants can send the goods tax paid, they collect the VAT and send it to to EU country, so there's no fees at customs. It works perfectly fine, but many people don't realize it or don't trust this.
Yep, this is my experience here in Greece. I'd randomly get maybe 5% of packages having a 3 € "customs fee" on top, but everything else was much cheaper. Now I have to pay VAT and import duties on everything, nothing gets extra fees but everything costs 50% more.
I guess the intent was to let local shops compete with AE, and they succeeded, because the prices are much more in line with the local market, I just miss all the cheap stuff :P
This is the Australian system as well. A lot cheaper for the government to collect with the tradeoff that small no name Chinese sellers can pretty much ignore it without penalty.
You're overthinking it.
They're not deliberately plotting some anti-tariff surprise campaign. They're just doing business as usual.
But the person receiving the package doesn't receive the package until they've paid the tariff.
You don't have to pay it -- if you don't, the package gets returned to sender or destroyed.
The post office delivers you a slip with information to go to your local post office to pay it and pick up the package. With UPS and FedEx you get a notice to pay online, and they deliver it once you do, as far as I know.
I've never heard of something being delivered without the tariff already having been paid, and then it going to collections. Has anyone ever experienced that personally? I don't see how that would be legal, or why a delivery service would expose themselves to risk of nonpayment.
The only time I've received an item that had a fee, FedEx delivered it and then a week later I got a bill from Fedex in the mail.
It depends on the carrier. As multiple other commenters have explained, you can absolutely be hit with a tariff fee after receiving the package.
They do not care if you didn't want to pay the tariff. They don't want to deal with warehousing it, offloading it, or returning it to sender. They want to get it into your hands and deal with the logistics later.
This is literally false. My wife paid for a jacket from Ireland. Ireland jacket arrives. Weeks later, tariff shit comes in the mail.
That is not normal. Even a recent article explains:
> US customers who placed orders on shopping websites like the popular Chinese fast-fashion platform Shein have been particularly impacted, even if they made their purchases long before the tariffs were announced. They are now forced to either pay hefty fees—in some cases, more than the value of the items inside — or have their packages sent back.
> They show Love’s order was put on hold for several hours, during which she received the notice asking her to pay the import duties. DHL also noted the package would be returned in five days if she declined to do so.
https://www.wired.com/story/tariffs-china-prices-fees-shein-...
I can find a few anecdotes online about FedEx delivering first and then charging later. I can also find people saying they called FedEx and refused to pay, and FedEx waived the amount. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how FedEx can hold you responsible for payment when you didn't engage in business with them -- you didn't purchase anything from them and you didn't sign any contract with them. If they paid the tariff before delivering to you, then that's on them.
> I don't see how FedEx can hold you responsible for payment when you didn't engage in business with them
Literally the first thing I thought. You want to send me to collections? Fine. Now let the collection agency prove that I owe the debt.
So if I wanted to mess with someone I can just send them tons of cheap crap from Temu and they'll be forced to pay tariffs for items they never asked for?
> send you to collections if you don't pay it That doesn't make sense. So can I cause troubles to someone by ordering an unwanted $1 temu item to their house, and thereby summon a collection agency to them (if they don't pay the $75 fee)?
You ordered the package, so you have to pay the fees. If you gift the package to someone, that is nice of you but they do not become involved in your purchase by that.
The GP meant if I maliciously order a $1 in your name, specifically to cause you to pay.
wow i see a variation of SWAT'ing someone. Just flood your unliked neighbour with aliexpress packages. It costs you 0.5$ ant 75$ for him. real life DoS attack.
Ordering pizzas cash-on-delivery to someone’s house is already a fairly common form of online harassment (sometimes also a precursor to swatting).
And because they aren't morons, Pizza places will generally deny an order of 20 pizzas, pay on delivery, to an address they don't have an existing relationship with.
Cops haven't seemed to figure out that way of reducing abuse. Maybe if we pay them what we pay pizza delivery workers they will figure out how not to swat people.
Pizza places figured out not to do that because it's more profitable not to do that. Cops don't care because they still get to play with their toys and they generally have qualified immunity for civil violations that occur during the swatting.
You can not deliver a pizza based on a 2% chance of fraud. If there's a chance of bomb, shooting etc the same threshold doesn't apply. So the police have completely different criteria.
Kind of. People can always refuse to pay it and charge back. I'd imagine the US is about to have a massive amount of unclaimed parcels to deal with.
I assume we'll see backups on both sides. Containers backed up in Chinese ports and a huge backlog of unclaimed packages and delayed tariff bills waiting for USPS/UPS/FedEx to process them.
I doubt credit card purchases will be an option once we start seeing a lot of chargebacks. They are an absolute pita to deal with for the vendor and processor. I expect your payment options will be limited to those that don’t allow chargebacks.
In the EU they do care (or rather the advertised price already included all fees, tariffs and VAT).
I think they also send everything from EU warehouses because that loophole was closed years ago.
The parent comment is joking that everyone should look for disgruntled Temu users and ask if they have few minutes to talk about laws and tariffs.
No offense to guys talking about other topics on those occasions.
> They don't pay the tariffs. The person receiving the package does.
How does that work? I am assuming it’s not US as I had never got any tariff charges or brokerage fees from the likes of FedEx or UPS.
You get a letter from your delivery company (in the UK, usually the Post Office or Royal Mail) with a link to pay import taxes. Once you pay, the delivery is scheduled.
Depending on country rules, it is sometimes possible for the sender to pay and then include the charges in their delivery fees.