I recently sold some cards (not on ebay) to a buyer in Denmark. He paid via goods & services and I shipped through PayPal. The cards made it to Denmark customs, but the buyer is upset that I did not declare it as a gift and he has to pay fees.
He has absolutely refused to pay the fees and instead offered to ship the cards back to me so I can resend them with a gift declaration. Iâve shipped overseas plenty of times, but have never dealt with this issue.
Should I agree to his terms? And if I donât, can he scam me out of my cards/money by filing a claim with PayPal? What are your guysâ experiences with marking purchases as gifts?
Declaring the package as a gift does not remove import fees. It only makes the threshold for the fees higher. So, if you shipped them items worth 30⏠and declare it as a gift, they wouldnât have to pay import fee, where otherwise they would have to, but if they bought stuff worth 70âŹ+, theyâd have to pay import fee regardless of if it is declared a gift or not. At least thatâs my understanding of it.
Sounds like an unreasonable pest to be blunt. You didnât do anything wrong, he just has a sense of entitlement.
If that was a deal breaker, he should have mentioned it before you shipped out to avoid this mess.
The tough part here is you donât have the cards in your possession anymore.
Honestly, Iâd try and amend the situation and have them returned so you can just get through it and send them back. It seems to be the path of least resistance and potential for losing cards. When you send them back as a gift just put the item description as âPokemon Cardsâ and declare a very low value and everything should be fine. He should agree to pay shipping costs a second time since it was his fault for not making his terms clear the first time (assuming he didnât.)
If you donât mind me asking, what value range are these cards? If the value is substantial, itâs your call in assessing the risk associated with marking the value low. Iâve personally never had a package get lost (fingers crossed) but it can happen.
After printing a label and packaging an item Iâve had people request that I mark the value even lower than I already marked it even though itâs a gift because they say their country charges X and itâs too much. I wish I could just tell them, âtoo bad shit head. I donât wanna wait fifteen days for a label refund and Iâm already doing you a favor.â
Instead I just put on a smile, print a new label, repackage the item, and move on. Luckily I havenât already shipped an item before they tell me.
Be polite, get through it.
How much was the declared value? I think Denmark has similar customs charge limit as in other Nordic countries aka 22 euros inc. shipping.
Totally buyerâs responsibility to take care of fees in this scenario when cards have already reached customs, to me it sounds like you were doing business first time so marking full value as merchandise doesnât surprise. Iâd shut down the option where cards are returned to you and reshipped to buyer, total waste of time and money.
Out of courtesy I had declared the value as 20 USD (the actual value was significantly more). He claims that customs is charging him 30 USD to receive the package.
If I am not mistaken, any EU country can freely import from outside the EU up to 22 euro (excl. shipping and handling costs). So if you declared the package for 20 US$ it should not be hit by customs. He maybe has to pay fees over the shipping costs, and those are dependant on the country. I know Dutch customs negate fees if the custom fees are higher than the actual shipping fees.
Let him check at the tax bureau why heâs being hit for 30$ on a package declared 20$.
The buyer is actually lurking on this thread and has explained to me that apparently Denmarkâs fee system is pretty terrible. âBecause for everything over 80dkk, you have to pay a 160dkk handling fee for the post office and 25% tax.â
So hereâs what you do in the future, Buyer; tell the seller your situation ahead of time and agree on values with each other before the seller sends the package.
It may just be worth your(buyer) time to pay the fees and learn a lesson for the future so you donât have to pay for shipping again and wait another several weeks.
As I said; Denmark is very cruel on itâs taxes.
But, still if following your link a gift packages between two individuals should not involve money. So only thing the buyer is trying to ask the seller is assisting him in tax evasion by sending the package as a gift with no declared value.
