I am not sure If I can report this to any official authority or not but I would like to urge any of you receiving this kind of charges to make sure you double check before paying.
Here is the story: I ordered something from Spain for the amount of 43CHF, including VAT. Nothing special about, nothing valuable really. Today I received a letter from DPD that I need to pay 10CHF for Administrative Costs and 33CHF for Verzollung.
I call DPD and ask them to explain to me why they are charging me 43CHF. The guy says it's for the Import fees. I say well according to the official papers from Zollamt, I see nothing payable really. He gets panicked for a while and he says ok ok I will send you a credit note for the amount so you don't have to pay anything.
What the heck?! How do these companies get away with this?
Same thing happened to us. We were billed 20 francs per parcel for 2 separate parcels/orders. Neither order was over 65 francs and the orders were unrelated to each other and in different months. The delivery driver did not say that the acceptance of the parcel entailed costs. This is important. You need to be made aware of costs before accepting the parcel, if not the fees are invalid.
If we were to have known there were fees coming, we would have refused the parcels.
We have received reminder bills with fees added to the original amounts, but this was a few months ago, we're ignoring DPD completely on this.
We will only react if DPD send something by registered post, as anything else isn't valid from a legal point of view, for such notifications. They are wasting their own time and money on these reminder bills.
I guess many companies try to get a bonus this way: I once was shipped a small personal item via DHL that I forgot when traveling abroad. I ensured that the sender labels it on the shipment form that it is a personal item I own thus exempt from VAT.
A week later got the letter from DHL, please pay $$$ for VAT and customs. I replied saying that I have a photo from sent by the sender where the original shipment form says it is VAT-free and their reply was basically "never mind then"
I ordered some stuff which was sent in 2 separate packages from Paul Smith, delivered by FedEx, and they tried to charge me an additional 22chf "admin fee" per package for dealing with the import tasks. I complained to Paul Smith and got it refunded. It's basically a way of them to skim more money from the customer to offset their own costs.
Ignoring the bill is a terrible idea and will likely lead to legal issues and a Betreibung. Seriously, never ignore bills that have not even sent in error, this is just unwise in every respect as there is a process behind everyone that continually escalated.
Similar with DHL who "by mistake" said the value was 69 CHF when in reality was 59 CHF. Got sorted but its always so time consuming and I think they bank on that at times, one just pays the 30 CHF because "life is too short" etc but personally I hate paying anything I do not owe.
DPD have in their conditions that there are processing costs and that they add 37CHF to the value if no postage is declared. I don't know if the costs are in all cases or only if VAT is due.
DHL also have processing charges but the last time I ordered something I only got a bill for the VAT. The bill came by email I suppose because I have a DHL account and that might also be why there was no extra fee?
Firstly a Betreibung can only be started up against a resident. My partner is not a resident. We happened to have it addressed to them, I don't remember why.
Secondly, a Betreibung would only be valid if it has been proven that the invoice has been received. This isn't the case. The first step that DPD has to take is a registered letter - this hasn't happened yet.
We know where we stand legally on this.
But for any of that waffle they claim in their conditions actually to be valid, first of all you need to be informed about it prior to signing for the parcel or prior to it being dumped in your garden! In our case this didn't happen. If it had have done, we would have refused the consignments - this is your right!