We had ordered a laptop from a Chinese company known as Ebayhnhy located at YiHe Building Room 1107, No.26 Yi He Road, ZhengZhou 450007, Henan Prov., China, telephone number is : 86037168277908. In its first e-mail this company categorically said that " the item will arrive to your door directly you needn't pay any tax to your country." After we had made the payment, the company claimed to have shipped the laptop to us and gave us a tracking number. We were unable to check / track its parcel No. EA703586476CN on www.ems.com.cn. It kept on giving us an error code and where-abouts of the parcel were unknown.
WE once again approached the seller to inquire about our shipped goods. They then sent us an e-mail informing us that the Custom service center had detained our package as it has been blocked by them and that we should pay 102 euro as tax.
We were astonished at this demand. The seller should have told us about this expense before we had placed an order. Then only we could have decided whether to buy this laptop or not? Now when an order has been placed, payment has been made and the selling company claims to have shipped this product, they have come up with a demand of a duty which is equal to half the price of the laptop. This duty makes the buying price completely out of our buying limits. Furthermore, Customs duty is never levied in the sending country. It is only when the shipped product reaches its destination - the receiving country can impose customs duty. The sending country has no right to impose any customs duty at all. We believe that the seller's claim that the item has been detained in customs is meaningless.
The selling company clearly violated its selling terms and conditions under which in its first e-mail it had claimed that the item will arrive to our door directly and we needn't pay any tax on this item. We advised the selling company to cancel the order and issue us a refund. But they completely refused to cooperate and said that if we did not pay immediately our package will incur further expense known as "Detention Charge". Till the writing of this report, the company is not responding to our e-mails and we are heading for a total loss.