How to dispute a customs invoice

Disputes fail most often because they are aimed at the wrong party. Telling a courier that your duty is too high achieves nothing — the courier did not set it and cannot change it. Telling Customs that a brokerage fee is excessive achieves nothing either. Establishing which half of the invoice you are objecting to is the whole game.

Carrier charges are the winnable ones. Every major courier publishes its surcharge schedule, so a dispute becomes a factual comparison: this is what you charged, this is what your schedule says, please explain the difference. Send it to billing rather than general customer service, reference the shipment number, and quote the published rate.

The duty is a different process. If the goods were misclassified or the declared value was wrong, that is corrected through a post-entry amendment, initiated by whoever filed the entry. It is a real remedy with a real refund at the end of it, but the effort is meaningful and for a small consumer parcel it usually exceeds the amount in dispute. For a commercial shipment it is often worth doing.

What to check

• 01Separate government charges from carrier charges before writing to anyone.
• 02For carrier charges: cite the published schedule, the shipment number, and the discrepancy.
• 03For duty: establish whether the classification or the declared value was wrong.
• 04Keep the invoice, the customs paperwork, and the original order confirmation.