You can watch the video here.
Steven S said:
This happened to me YEARS ago when I used to buy wholesale through Agents that worked for major factories. These agents are the ones that really mess up. The agents are in a very crazy market where competition is fierce (everyone is selling the same damn thing) so they try to stick out by offering insanely low customs costs but this is a risk some agents take all of the time. An agent ultimately tried to do me a favor and keep costs as low as possible for me to increase my profit margin by entering an improper customs charge so that I would pay next to nothing on import costs. To accomplish that, they had to lie about the value of my item to customs and here is the thing…. Customs will seize improperly valued items BUT give the sender the opportunity to prove actual value. Customs is now holding their package hostage and want a ransom, so they give the buyer 2-3 months (tops) to fix this and they will not send the package back to the sender. Basically as I’m typing this, XFX’s package has been set to either be destroyed at the expense of the receiver or released at the expense of the receiver. The receiver has no choice in this matter but they were fully aware of this risk and they got away with this several times before. In my case, I was a receiver covered by Paypal and once Paypal saw that I hadn’t received ANYTHING for the invoice I paid, Paypal didn’t care about logistics, they just refunded my money. Then with that money I was able to pay the release of the package. Basically I ended up getting the whole order for free, the agent got screwed but this is very typical in the import/export business. F.Y.I – The buyer/receiver knew that the sender was improperly valuing the items to get low import costs. Its why the buyer chose to do business with them. The buyer just has to pay the proper cost. Now this doesn’t mean they can’t do this again. They can do this over and over but out of every 10 orders, they will get caught once. It still makes lying to customs worth it in the end which is why Agents won’t ever stop doing this.
My reply:
If I had a legit business, I wouldn’t risk doing something like that, since I’ve learned the hard way that trying to get rich quickly never ends well, but as a normal consumer who buys stuff for personal use, I find it super annoying to pay draconian customs fees, and luckily, PayPal never disappoints when it comes to refunds. I remember when I bought a used Samsung 970 PRO 1TB from a German seller (through an auction), they didn’t bother to mark the price down on the invoice like every other seller on both eBay, and AliExpress, and it took 2 months for the package to arrive, knowing that I used DHL Paket, which cost €39.99. I did get a full refund, since it made no sense to wait any longer than 45 days. The package arrived after 56 days, but before it did, I got a call from the delivery guy, telling me that I needed to pay almost a 50% customs fee. Thing is, if I were interested in paying the customs at all, I would’ve bought the damn thing from Amazon brand new, and let them charge me what they call “import fees”, so out of human decency, after I tested the M.2, and realized it was pretty much new based on the TBW (terabytes written), I decided to pay the seller back, but first, I had to make sure the 50% customs fee was deducted. I did let the seller know in a lengthy email, but they didn’t bother to reply. I did feel kind of bad, because the seller didn’t really have a choice in the matter, but then again, I had no choice, either, and I got really tired of constantly being “the pacifist who always turns the other cheek”.
Not sure if you’re familiar with a smartphone brand called Ulefone. When I ordered Ulefone Armor X8 from a random seller on eBay, I got the phone from Ulefone’s HQ in Hong Kong in 2 days (DHL Express), and getting something from Hong Kong or USA to Morocco (where I live) in 2-4 days feels like Christmas every time (since I’m used 3-8 weeks)! 😂 And get this, the invoice said $45, while I paid almost 200 bucks for it. Thing is, I kind of knew the German seller was gullible by the fact that he felt the need to mention in the product description that the M.2 SSD was used in a “non-smoking household”. While I appreciated that as a guy who’s allergic to cigarette smoke, it just made sense that it wouldn’t even occur to him to mark the price down even though the item was technically used, and sold at an eBay auction; Germans are known to follow rules like their life depends on it. Heck, a former university classmate of mine who lives in Germany once told me that he was scared to even use VPN to watch pirated content, which is like saying, “I’m afraid of using condoms.” 😂