Why was my customer charged Duties on a DDP shipment?

If a package is shipped with Passport's DDP service level, all duties and taxes should have already been pre-paid. When duties and taxes are requested on a DDP shipment, there are two possible scenarios that may have occurred:

1. Fraudulent requests made by 3rd parties

We have seen cases of fraudulent requests to collect duties and taxes via text message or email. These requests are often made from email addresses that look very similar to a true carrier.  As a standard practice, customers should always be wary of any requests for payments via text message or email.

2. Package shipped with incorrect service level

While this scenario does not occur often, we have sometimes seen some mistakes in service level translation from Passport to the last mile carrier. If a package is shipped DDP and a true customs authority is asking for additional duties and taxes, please flag this to our Customer Experience Team as soon as possible so we can help facilitate the clearance without billing the customer directly.

Note: If a customer pays the duties and taxes on a DDP shipment separately from the cart checkout flow, please flag this to our Customer Experience Team.  In these cases, brands hold the original payment from the checkout flow until your Passport invoice is processed.  Once we are made aware of the duplicate payment, we will remove that line item from the invoice and you will not be charged.  You can then issue a refund for the duty and tax amount directly to the customer.

If neither of the above scenarios fits the issue you are seeing, please feel free to reach out to our Customer Experience Team for additional assistance!