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Comment by HugoDaniel | Hacker News Reader

I sincerely hope that FedEx fails. I once bought the book "FreeBSD Kernel Internals" from informit. They sent it through FedEx. I payed the shipping costs in the informit site, as standard procedure. The book passed through customs fine, then FedEx hold it and told me they would not deliver the book unless i paid them 50EUR.

This is their current and common practice here in Portugal. Fsck them.

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If it makes you feel any better UPS in France does that to me all the time. It isn't the carriers -- it's the protectionist tax schemes of the EU. I once had a replacement wheel for a kid's stroller sent to me in France from the US. The wheel cost $20, and I had to pay $35 in import duties -- despite that part being unavailable anywhere outside of the US.

Blame the government, not FedEx.

FedEx (and apparently UPS) do this without any type of warning, they are probably exploiting some loophole in the law to be able to do it. They can't expect happy reactions from their customers. I blame them for doing it without proper communication and also anyone that plays along with them without providing proper alternatives after knowing that they do this kind of stuff.

That is not the way business should be done. There should be a social responsibility part in every company. Extorting money goes against that.

Are you sure the money actually goes to Fedex? From the description it looks like the money goes to customs, which is a government agency. In that case, it's not clear why you're angry with Fedex, which pretty much has no choice but to charge whatever the government tell them to charge.

I called customs, talked to them, they don't apply fees to educational books. They released it free of charge but only to be picked by the entity with the paper for it. FedEx had that paper and they would only pick it up with 50EUR on their pockets. I argued that i could pick it up from customs myself and pay whatever taxes if i had the paper in my name instead. They said the 50EUR charge would be for the pickup paper and not for the package itself, that is why it was not charged by the sender. They threatened that if the money was not paid the package would return to sender (i have these emails and could send them to you if you want).

This story is not only mine but the same story for all the individuals who ordered stuff through FedEx that i have contacted here.

Wow that looks like extremely shady practice.

If you live in France, it seems that UPS made you pay abusively the custom duties (not due if the value of the package is below 150€). You should only have paid for the VAT, which tops at 20%. http://www.douane.gouv.fr/articles/a10753-achats-a-distance-...

Also, I got a delivery by UPS in France once, and they made me pay the custom duties (which was fine, for a parcel valued at 400€), but also added their own «paperwork fees» that were as high as the custom duties, and were pretty much unexpected.

> I sincerely hope that FedEx fails...

Yikes. You had a bad experience once with a company that's pretty reputable. Now you hope thousands of people lose their jobs and investors lose their money. This seems disproportionate, to say the least!

This is their current and common practice. When it happened I collected a few other stories from individuals who sent stuff with them. This is common.

Taking your argument one notch up: I hope and believe that this kind of coercion should be discouraged and that a company that insists on doing this must fail. Society cannot put value in these behaviors in any way (paying them 50EUR is giving them value). If you work at a company that mistreats their customers by extorting money from them then it would be better if you start looking for another job (better as in: better for us all). We have to work towards a system/society where the place we work should be a choice and not a last resort thing that our survival depends uppon (slavery). That is the base pillar of the free market ideology or any other ideology worthy of discussion (put in your favorite *ism here).

If you are an investor that is willingly and knowingly putting money in a company that behaves like that and expect to get your profit back because of these tactics then you should lose your money. We cannot work based on extortion or forceful positions.

These are just my opinions. They don't take away the fact that FedEx is acting improperly.

Same here in El Salvador, retained my package and after not notifying (got an ISP log of missed/entry calls and no emails) wanted to charge me 40USD aside of the usual "other charges" 50USD.

Extorsion. They cannot expect sympathy or good will if they do this with their customers. No warnings, just plain money grabbing or else your order is sent back to the sender. :(

>passed through customs

Your vendor selected to bill the duties and taxes to you.

Then why did FedEx explicitly told me that the 50EUR was the charge for the paper to pick it up and not for the package itself ? Why did the customs told me that there was no charge for books and that anyone with the paper for the package could pick it up free of charge ?

If we want to be really specific:

By FedEx i mean "Rangel Expresso SA" (www.rangel.pt or www.fedex.com/pt) which is their representation (Global Service Participant (GSP)) here in Portugal.

By customs i mean airport customs (the ones i contacted), not the portuguese state customs. I don't know how they evaluated the package, they probably didn't even knew about it (due to lack of staff or other stuff...).

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