Hacker News Reader

but in the process all their customers will have been burned buying something from Temu and many will be wary of buying in the future even if the tariff situation improves etc?

View on HN

That's certainly how it worked out in Europe, where the processing fee was much less (€5-10 usually).

Since 2021 foreign merchants can send the goods tax paid, they collect the VAT and send it to to EU country, so there's no fees at customs. It works perfectly fine, but many people don't realize it or don't trust this.

This is the Australian system as well. A lot cheaper for the government to collect with the tradeoff that small no name Chinese sellers can pretty much ignore it without penalty.

Yep, this is my experience here in Greece. I'd randomly get maybe 5% of packages having a 3 € "customs fee" on top, but everything else was much cheaper. Now I have to pay VAT and import duties on everything, nothing gets extra fees but everything costs 50% more.

I guess the intent was to let local shops compete with AE, and they succeeded, because the prices are much more in line with the local market, I just miss all the cheap stuff :P

Reply on news.ycombinator.com