Well, it's here. The long-awaited tariff policy has now been fully implemented. And I doubt it's going to prove very popular.

The big surprise is not the 15% duty. Most of our customers are willing to come to terms with that. But what about the added processing fees?

These fees are totally new to us and came out of left field. All of the updates sent out to volume shippers in Israel in recent weeks warned about the 15% duty and how the de minimis was set to plummet from $800 to $1. But narry a word about the customs processing fees.

It also seems that the US government hasn’t been so transparent about all this. Today we went digging around high and low, and eventually found this gem way down in the fine print of US Gov website:

“Many people have found the various charges and fees levied to be higher than they expected, and sometimes exceed the cost of their purchase(s). Buyers often have the misunderstanding that when the purchase price includes shipping and handling, all the costs associated with clearing the package through CBP are covered by the seller. They don't realize that brokers fees and CBP duties may be an additional charge that the buyer is responsible for.”

And that “additional charge” adds up. Of course US Customs came up with charming names: the Entry Preparation Fee, the Disbursement Fee and the Merchandise Processing Fee.

Even if someone expects to pay 15% duty on a $100 order, they might assume the added fees will be minimal. But we’ve already seen cases where the processing fees alone exceed the duty — sometimes adding $30–$50 to the total.

• 15% ad volurem duty (expected)
• Entry Preparation Fee
• Disbursement Fee
• Merchandise Processing Fee (MPF)

Canadians have long been accustomed to paying customs and VAT when they order from abroad. But the administration fees they have to pay to Canadian customs are a lot less than their neighbors to the south are now paying to US Customs.

Obviously, this is not viable in the long-term. Who wants to pay $140 for a tallit and $20 for shipping, and then pay another $50 or $60 for customs and customs processing?

So what are we going to do about this new situation?

Going forward, it seems like the best option is for us to provide our customers with a pre-paid option. Since we can have the shipping company charge us the US customs and customs processing bill we are now scrambling to find a way to present that as an option at checkout.

In addition, we're reintroducing international mail options, which are slower than UPS and DHL, but the customs processing fees are significantly lower.

Okay, but what about our customers who didn’t notice our info pages (here and here) and now got stiffed with exorbitant bills? The truth is, we don’t know how to help bail them out. On one hand, we did take pains to post everything we knew in our web store in advance, but on the other hand, we certainly don’t like to see our customers getting charged large amounts for what seems to be essentially just bloated, inefficient bureaucracy.

Really the bill is between the recipient and US Customs. The shipping company acts primarily as the agent of US Customs to collect the amount billed. In fact, we can’t even see the bill, although presumably there’s a way for the customer to either click to see how it’s itemized, or send a message to the shipping company asking them for an itemized bill, so that they can at least see what exactly they’re being asked to pay.