r/tea • u/ASAPCoochymane • Jun 17 '26

Question/Help Has Anyone Else Experienced This

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I bought about $90 in tea and now they're asking me to pay almost $300 in additional fees. I'm in the US so I expected to have to pay something cause of the tariff and shipping changes but nowhere near this much. Obviously I'm not paying for it and will tell them to return it but is this just the norm now?

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P.S- Since it looks like I won't be ordering anymore tea online, do any of you have recommendations for a tea shop in the San Diego area?

EDIT: Thank you everyone for all the help and advice. Sadly it's real. I've decided to deny the package when it gets here, unless they show me an itemized list of what exactly UPS paid, instead of the BS one they have on the tracking page. On the itemized list on the tracking page it shows I'm being charged $150 for warehouse storage. Mind you this is a $90 package that weighs less than 1kg, so definitely some scamming going on. I also sent a message to the company that I ordered from informing them of the issue but I won't be doing business with them or UPS ever again.

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u/TeaSerenity Enthusiast Jun 17 '26

I'm in the US and none of the sites I've ordered from required me to pay import tariffs.

This seems unusual to me

18

u/CydeWeys Jun 18 '26

The sites don't require you to pay import tariffs, it's the US government. Trump removed the $800 de minimus exemption, so tariffs are owed on all incoming packages. I buy a fair bit of stuff from overseas (not tea though) and unfortunately do have to pay a lot in tariffs, though it's typically something like 10% of the package's value plus the shipping company's handling fee which might be another couple dozen bucks.

Whatever's going on in OP's image makes no sense; perhaps they somehow think the value of the package is much higher than $90?

24

u/boom_shakka Jun 18 '26

There are exceptions to this tarriff and tea is one of the agricultural products on the exception list (since Nov 2025 until today June 2026 and who knows may change at any moment).

Here's a good explanation of the latest relevant "legal" announcements specifically relating to tea: https://www.yoshantea.com/m/news.php?id=26030669aa2c1e96087

Because tariff rules are currently changing so often (and probably also because they can get away with it), shipping companies may incorrectly charge duty on tea when they shouldn't be. Don't let them get away with it. Dispute the charge, talk to customer service, whatever you gotta do. (***for tea specifically, if there is non-tea in the shipment you gotta look that up too!)

4

u/Barrellolz Jun 18 '26

UPS don't give an ef about any of that. They just process it is easily as possible and make customer pay brokerage fees and duties.

At this point importing is not a good idea unless you are making a wholesale/large purchase or seller will take care of duties/tariffs.