Complimentary Gift - delivery company wants paying for the import charges..?

[gillybean2]

Wasn’t sure where to post this. Hoping someone can help. I’m still not convinced this isn’t some kind of scam but the companies involved are very well known.

I received a delivery a couple of weeks ago. Liveried delivery van, uniformed driver knocked at the door, he said my name which I confirmed, I signed for the parcel on his tablet device thing.

On opening the parcel there was a card included saying that this was a gift with their compliments. It’s a company I shopped with a Christmas for the first time.

Item is a branded tote bag and on their website this retails for £15.95. Not my style but a free bag is a free bag so thanks very much.

Yesterday I got an email purporting to be from this delivery company and wanting a payment which I assumed was a scam so reported as phishing.
Today I received another email, this time marked as from a genuine sender 🤔 So I looked at it a bit more closely. It certainly does look like it’s from the actual delivery company and this freebie is the only parcel I recall receiving from them recently. So I did a bit of online searching for known scams and as suggested I went to their actual website and put in the delivery number and it came up as a genuine delivery by them with my name as having signed for the parcel. The email is saying I owe them ‘duties, taxes and fees’ of £57.68 which they have paid on my behalf. Searching online it seems the delivery company will chase me for this.

How can a ‘complimentary’ gift I didn’t request valued at £15.95 cost me £57.68 in import charges? It came from the Netherlands according to the delivery info.

What are my options here? I didn’t order the item and there’s no return label in the parcel. I tried phoning the delivery company customer service but it was already shut. I also tried calling the customer service of the company the freebie is from but they are also shut. I am a bit of a worrier and am debating whether I need to rummage through the recycling to find the packaging it came in in case I am liable for these charges on a gift and need to find some way to return it…

There's no import charges or customs etc payable on goods below a certain value. And if there are charges to pay, they just don't deliver the item until they're paid!

I'd ignore it.

My partner ordered something from Germany. It was impounded at customs until he paid the customs duty. But it was only payable because the value was over a certain threshold (a few hundred pounds I think).
Yours sounds like a scam.

If you've genuinely run afoul of customs, they wouldn't send the item onwards to you until you paid it. And £15 is below the customs threshold:
https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/tax-and-duty
This company sound like they're behaving in a very scammy way. It's also illegal for them to send you unsolicited goods then charge you for them: https://www.saga.co.uk/magazine/life/can-i-keep-goods-delivered-to-me-by-mistake?srsltid=AfmBOopJ8_nkuXEj6R5i-_eq_bZ9pTlImEjuIQ9Yfo6wnxVwm9kuT72V
(sorry had to edit the links in due to a bug)

Thanks for that info. Looking up the details on gov.uk it seems there shouldn’t be any charges on the free item even at the retail value. It can’t technically be a gift as it’s from a company so the usual value applies for charges and it’s well below that.

Who is the company so the rest of us can be forewarned?

I have ordered goods from Hong Kong and I had to pay import duty. They did deliver the goods then sent me mail saying I owed the duty. I didn’t pay until the contacted me directly with the details I had given to confirm it was as expected

dont don’t do anything until someone contacts you directly . Ignore it until then

yes but that was things you purchased.....a low value free gift doesn't attract customes charges. Is the "well known" company Shein or Temu or of that ilk?

Contact the company that sent you the free gift and tell them what has happened and how annoyed you are. Its their problem to sort out not yours.

Oh right, I hadn't thought of those. I was thinking it might be a big Western company having goods made in China, like furniture for instance.
I bought something once from eBay with a note to say free gift to follow (from China.)
It came in an envelope, it was two fish that unfurl that used to be in Christmas crackers. Totally baffled as to the point of it. No customs charge though!

Thanks for all the replies. Seems I made an incorrect assumption. Long story short it was a different delivery (not the freebie item -which is from a famous stand alone big store in London) and the duty may actually be owed.

Long version for anyone who’s interested…
There was a separate delivery by the same delivery company while I was away and taken in by DS which I wasn’t aware of having arrived as it was something for DS which he opened.

I got a chaser text this morning to pay in addition to previous emails. Having then spoken to FedEx they advised the name of the person who sent the delivery which meant nothing to me. They refused to send a copy invoice to me because the invoice is addressed to the person who sent the item.

They confirmed item was already delivered and the date. As I knew I wasn’t home then (in hospital) I thought perhaps it had gone to a neighbour. They eventually emailed me a copy of the delivery info which included a signature and details of the sender. This included the person’s name they had advised but also the company name which I then recognised. Hadn’t realised it was coming from Netherlands when DS asked me to order it.

They are still refusing to send me a copy of the invoice and said I needed to contact the sender to find out if they had already paid it, and to confirm that a copy could be forwarded to me if I’m responsible for paying it as it’s not got my address on the invoice. I said I wasn’t paying without a copy invoice so if they expect me to pay they need to send it to me.

I’ve emailed both the company and the relevant department at the delivery company asking for a copy and confirmation of whether the sender has/needs to pay or if I do.

So still not totally resolved but it was my mistake on thinking it was the freebie; which is totally unrelated. Thanks to everyone who responded to my OP.

Oh my God young adult/older teen children ordering stuff randomly. It's a nightmare. Fortunately, I got fairly lucky with mine quite early on. They had ordered a ton of new clothes and hadn't wanted to let me know what they were doing. They confessed, and I asked to see the order so that, basically, we could cancel a fair amount of it. I realised they had ordered it to a different address in our road. It turned out they were not aware that a postcode applies to several houses in a road or area and not to just our house. I think the prospect of not receiving the items they'd paid for has been so alarming that thankfully the unauthorised, unwanted, unnecessary purchases has died down quite a lot. Until they discovered facebook marketplace - oh my god again -home of scammers. I feel for you @op and sympathize a lot!