I just received a notice to pick up a DC-3 Digital Space-D with a price tag of $65 charged as "Brokerage fee". Apparently my US seller didn't realize the scam shipping to Canada. I refused to clear (with my heart broken as this is one pedal that I've longed for) and have them sent the pedal back. I wonder if 1) the shipper has to pick up the big fat fee and 2) does the shipper have to pay for the item shipped back? Fortunately the seller agreed to reship it through USPS.
After some thorough searches on newsgroup I can't find my answer. It's a really off-topic question so best suits this forum. Thanks folks!
UPS charges the broker fee due to the fact that they have in-house brokers to clear shipments for your at custom. All they do is to fill out some forms which can be totally automated. After that they will bill the receivers a chuck of $$$ because of that service. My DC-3 costs me $100 plus $11 shipping. I was then handed a $63 bill for that brokerage service. So I decided to refuse the shipment and have it sent back to the sender.
Thanks for the explanation. I'm sorry that you got screwed over by this scam. Is this problem unique to UPS? I've used USPS (regular U.S. mail) to ship eBay items I've sold to Canada, Australia, Germany, UK, etc. without any problems (at least, no problems I know about)....
The US sellers are totally innocent and i didn't realize it until reading the UPS shipping in newsgroups .... Now that it's shipped back to the seller I hope he doesn't have to pick up the brokerage fee having the pedal sent back to him from Canada.
UPS Brokerage Fee
Posted - 02/01/2006 : 21:33:36
