UPS and Not As Described disputes

[kkootenay]

A (US) seller agrees to ship to Canada by USPS/CanadaPost, and then, finding that it is cheaper for him to ship by UPS Ground, because UPS will pick up at his house and includes Delivery Confirmation automatically, an expensive service with USPS.

The Canadian buyer, who expected to pay the Canada Post $5 service charge plus sales tax, is faced on the doorstep with a $25 "customs brokerage charge" from the UPS driver.

If the US seller will not refund all or part of the customs brokerage fee, can the Canadian buyer open and win a Not As Described dispute on the basis that the shipping service was changed without his knowledge and that this cost him $20 more than agreed?

Can PP force a partial refund on this basis, without return of the product?

[PayPal_Adrian]

Thank you Autumn, I'm glad it helps.  If anything needs a little extra, please don't hesitate to ask. 

[Colin_Pye]

I've had many of these things crop up as well... but since the parts were needed, I had no choice but to accept the extra payments.  It seems there's a lack of understanding about this kind of problem, and I'll try to explain it clearer.

You buy something on Ebay, and agree to a $15 shipping charge, by USPS.  You have verified that the seller is sending things by USPS.  You may even have told them about the problems of shipping with UPS Ground.

The seller chooses to not ship by USPS, but instead gives your item to their neighbour, with the $15 you paid for shipping.  The neighbour then jumps on an airplane and shows up at your doorstep with the item in hand, and a bill for their round-trip airline fare, taxi fares to the airport, customs charges of $0.00, and taxes of $2.57.  They demand that you pay their extra expenses before you get your item.

The neighbour, in this case, is UPS.

Their standard procedure used to be to redirect your shipment to their brokerage service address, charge you their brokerage fees, customs/duties, taxes, and then courier charges to send the item from their warehouse to where the package was supposed to end up in the first place.  (It's worth noting that, at least in the past, UPS Air didn't do this, they just delivered the goods!)

These days, they hide the second shipment charges in their total bill, but the end result is the same -- because of the shipper's decision to change the carrier, you are left paying significantly more money than you had agreed to, and reasonably had expected to pay, or your item gets returned, and the seller is left with their original shipping charges.

I had one extreme case where Kodak was supposed to send me a single pamphlet on one of their products.  Instead of sending it by USPS, they sent out a sealed package of 20, by UPS Ground, at their expense.  It arrived with a bill for over $130, because of the trip through UPS, instead of just arriving with the morning mail, with no extra charges.  All this for an item smaller than a road map.

What is the proper way to resolve this sort of thing?