Surprise! You literally owe the tariffs

Business Insider

5 hours ago

Kat Omecene thought she was keeping things simple by asking her bridesmaids to buy whatever dresses they wanted for her wedding — as long as it matched her color palette, of course. But now, one of the women is in quite an expensive bind. In April, the bridesmaid ordered two dresses from the online retailer Six Stories for $400. Neither quite worked, so she wound up returning the items for a refund and thought she was in the clear, out only a small restocking fee. A few weeks later, however, she got a bill in the mail from FedEx, for $600.
"At first she thought it was a scam," Omecene says. "It looked like a scam to me."
The bridesmaid hadn't realized at the time, but the dresses were originally from China — meaning they were subject to President Donald Trump 's tariffs on all imports from the country. It was particularly costly because the packages arrived in the US just before Trump reduced tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30%. Omecene and her bridesmaid have confirmed the bill is actually from FedEx, and the seller has washed its hands of the situation despite her sending the dresses back, saying it's just a case of unfortunate timing. Plus, in the fine print, the seller's website says that any import duties are the customer's responsibility. Omecene is warning her other bridesmaids to be careful with their dress shopping, but the possibility of more tariff surprises around her wedding has her on edge. It's not always easy to tell where products are coming from or whether import duties are already factored in.
"We're trying our best to keep a budget, but I feel like things like this make it a lot harder," she says.
Many consumers are bracing for tariff-driven price increases. They've spent months expecting retail prices to creep up amid Trump's trade war. Some have even bid adieu to Shein and Temu, or at least have accepted that things from the Chinese e-commerce companies may take longer and come with a higher price tag. But by and large, people expected the tariff impact would be somewhat subtle. A dollar on top of the old price here, an extra fee there. For some consumers, however, tariff charges are slapping them in the face. Unexpected, steep import bills are landing on their doorsteps from logistics companies such as FedEx and UPS. The carriers have already paid the US government the import duties, and they're just passing along the bill — whether or not the seller alerted the buyer.
Omecene's bridesmaid is trying to figure out what to do about the sizable FedEx invoice. When I ask Omecene whether she feels pressured to reimburse her bridesmaid for the snafu, she sighs. "If it was a bridesmaid other than my sister, 100% yes, but because she's my sister, a little bit less so, which is probably horrible," she says. "She might not agree with that."
At the very least, perhaps it will eliminate the need for a wedding gift.
From the consumer perspective, the e-commerce experience has gotten super seamless. A few clicks and voilà, a fun little treat (or three) arrives at the door in a matter of days, often shipped for free. The painless process makes it really easy to overlook the logistical hurdles involved, from labor to shipping to taxes — including import taxes, or as you may have heard them called recently: tariffs. But what was once an afterthought is becoming front of mind under Trump's trade regime. I've spoken to multiple consumers who say they've had to do a lot of thinking about tariffs, because they're getting hit directly with the bill.
The existence of duties and tariffs isn't new. What's new for American consumers is that a lot more stuff is subject to duties, and the duties are higher. Casey Armstrong, chief marketing officer at ShipBob, a logistics and fulfillment company, explains that when consumers buy products from abroad, import duties and tariffs apply based on the declared value of the items and the type of items coming in. In many cases, the carrier pays the duties up front to get the package through customs and then bills the recipient afterward. This is called "delivery duty unpaid," or DDU (as opposed to "delivery duty paid," or DDP). It means the customer is responsible for import taxes and fees, the fees aren't included at checkout, and the carrier acts as a broker who pays customs up front and recoups the cost later, sometimes with additional fees for their trouble. The duties might still be owed even if the item is returned, because it technically was imported.
"It usually catches people off guard," he says. Shoppers may not realize their package was shipped internationally, or the website looks local, or the retailer doesn't say at checkout whether duties and taxes are included. "Some shipments may be over-declared in value, leading to inflated duty calculations," he adds.
Take Kevin Wood, who ordered a crypto wallet ring for about $160 from Tangem, a blockchain company headquartered in Switzerland. He placed the order in February, but the item was delayed, and it wound up arriving in May. Everything seemed good and fine, until a few weeks later when he got a nearly $250 bill from FedEx to cover the import costs. The seller hadn't mentioned tariffs when he placed the order, but despite Tangem being a Swiss company, the ring appears to have been manufactured in China. OK, but surely, he thought, FedEx wouldn't just drop an item off without clearing the extra charge — but that's not the case. He went as far as to reach out to Customs and Border Patrol, which said the situation seemed odd but confirmed the information on the bill tracks. FedEx said the bill's real. Tangem told him they'll look into it, but on their website, they state plainly that customers cover import costs.
"I had no notification, because if I had known this thing was going to cost me $400 to get to my door, I would have rejected it," Wood says. "I'm just trying to chase down what's real and what's not."
When Wood scrutinized the packaging, it looks like the order came just days before the Trump administration cut tariffs on China. "I'm kind of like, well, bad luck of the draw," he says.
A spokesperson for Tangem said in an email that a small number of customers have reported similar issues and that they're investigating each case "closely." They said that as an act of goodwill, they are reimbursing customers hit by tariff charges.
"I thought, 'UPS is charging me for what? Are they charging customers for delivery now?'"
Amanda Ivanelli, a lifestyle influencer, went viral on TikTok in May after posting a video about getting a $1,243 invoice from FedEx after ordering a haul of dresses from online retailer ASOS. The original order was about $800, but she returned all of the dresses but one, which cost around $150. "I literally did not like any of them. They smelled really bad," she says. A number of media outlets picked up the incident. Ivanelli's comments section filled up with political vitriol, as people assumed she was a Trump voter who got what she had coming in the tariffs. All the attention wound up being fruitful. She's heard from multiple people who had the same experience. The money she made off the TikTok post's engagement was enough to pay the FedEx bill, and all the attention seems to have gotten FedEx's attention, too, because it forgave the charge.
"We just kept calling back, and they were like, 'OK, well, one time, we never do this, but we'll waive it for you," Ivanelli says.
It's not just FedEx that's passing along fees. One woman I spoke to for this story was able to head off a charge from UPS on an $850 bag she'd ordered from Lupo, based in Spain. Before she got the item, she received a text from UPS saying she owed $250 for the delivery. She thought it was fake, but then a UPS driver at her door told her she owed it, too. "I thought, 'UPS is charging me for what? Are they charging customers for delivery now?'" she says. She wound up refusing the shipment and is still waiting for the refund on her bag, minus return fees.
Some consumers have begrudgingly gotten used to tariffs being the cost of doing business. Fernando Rivero recently bought his girlfriend a collectible Japanese figurine from an online shop based in China, and wasn't surprised when he got a bill for over $60 in "government charges" on top of $38 for "brokerage charges." He runs a side hustle helping small businesses set up their AI operations, which often entails sourcing hardware from China, so he knew that the extra costs were legit since he has passed on similar fees to his clients. Rivero has stopped making personal orders from China and is just waiting out the storm. It's really the brokerage fee that irks him, UPS's extra add-on for its service and expertise, which goes to the company's bottom line rather than offsetting the cost of tariffs. "That has to add up very quickly at the scale that UPS is operating at," he says. "I've never had to pay money to pay taxes."
The people I spoke with for this story ordered from a website that suggested somewhere that customers would be responsible for any duties and taxes. In no case was the information obvious or easily available. Still, Armstrong says, people shouldn't necessarily be shocked — consumers in many countries outside the US are used to this because of their countries' trade regimes, and in cases where duties applied for US customers, this has long been happening, too.
"People have been getting this beforehand, it's just with some of the changes recently, people are seeing it more commonly," he says.
Sellers should tell customers up front and clearly that they will be on the hook for tariffs, but they're probably not going to get into any legal trouble if they don't. Given how chaotic all of Trump's trade actions have been, they might not even know themselves what import taxes will apply.
Sebastian Vasquez, a customs broker at Omega CHB International in California, says that in many cases, the original seller, or "origins" in broker parlance, isn't really cluing in their customers to the shifting trade winds. "That's why people all of a sudden are like, 'Oh, I didn't know I had to pay that.' But it's like you kind of have to pay it now if you want to get your stuff," Vasquez says. "It is what it is."
The combination of modern capitalism and technology has made it all too easy to never have to think about where we buy things from or how we get them.
In an email, a FedEx spokesperson emphasized that the amount of duties and taxes and who is invoiced for it is not decided by logistics companies like FedEx — they're just facilitating the required payment to the government on behalf of sellers and/or buyers. They added that when completing an international shipping label, shippers decide whether they or the recipient are responsible for paying, and if a party isn't identified, the recipient is the default. If the shipper doesn't tell the buyer about the fees, the buyer is informed when the shipping company sends them an invoice.
I'll be honest, when I first heard that people were getting hit with tariff bills, I was shocked. But the more I've dug into it, the more I've realized this shouldn't be that big of a surprise.
When I reached out to Peter Quinter, a longtime customs and trade lawyer at Gunster, and described the horror of the $600 bridesmaid dress tariff in detail, his reaction was nonplussed. "It will happen to them more often," he says. He deals with corporate clients on a much larger scale who have built out operations in China and are now discovering their businesses are no longer financially feasible under Trump's trade regime.
"It's a surprise to the US importer who's not knowledgeable whatsoever about US customs import requirements," he says. "So, nevertheless, it's always the importer's responsibility. So if you're a US consumer and you're buying something online and you don't know where it's made, and when you finally get the item or a bill for the item and it's made in China and you're going to pay more, that's your responsibility."
Some online shoppers are, essentially, unwitting importers and thus responsible for paying import taxes.
At some point, one would presume, much of this will get ironed out. Sellers have incentives not to be up front about tariff costs, because said costs will probably deter people from buying. But as more tariff-related horror stories spread, many will hopefully get better about telling customers what's what. Perhaps carriers will get faster at alerting people about potential charges, though their role here is really as a law-abiding intermediary. Some of the dust around Trump's initial trade moves has settled, giving buyers and sellers alike a better lay of the land. And some tariffs have come down. All of the logistics people I spoke to for this story acknowledged it's difficult for the average consumer to decipher whether they'll get charged for tariffs. When making a purchase, they should check whether the seller has already factored in duties and taxes or ask the seller directly, but they may not think to or even realize the item is coming from abroad.
"If you're hit with a bill and it was not disclosed at the checkout or clearly, reach out to the brand," Armstrong says.
The combination of modern capitalism and technology has made it all too easy to never have to think about where we buy things from or how we get them. Tariffs, for better or for worse, have thrown a wrench into that in a multitude of ways, including proving to be a rude awakening for unlucky and unsuspecting online shoppers.