LeftyBassist.com

I ordered a MTD Z bass from a Canadian seller on ebay about a month ago and just got a bill in the mail from UPS indicating that I owe $80.21 for customs duties and brokerage fees! I've ordered MANY instruments from all over the world over the years and have never been hit with fees before. Was this something that could have been avoided had the seller shipped it as a gift or shipped it with less insurance or something? Can I fight it? The bill says I'll incur a 6% penalty if I don't pay it by 12/11.

AFAIK, you can only fight it if the instrument was originally made in the USA, in which case it would be excluded under the so-called 'repatriation' clause.
Otherwise, musical instruments are normally subject to an 8% (last time I looked) import duty. No taxes should apply.

It's quite possible your previous sellers may have paid the duty up front. Who knows for sure, but it may be a requirement to pay the duties up front when exporting from some other countries.

Insuring it should have had no effect one way or another in this case.

Having it declared as a gift may have gotten you off the hook, but I don't lnow for sure.

Looks like you may have just gotten lucky in your previous attempts.

P.S. What a bummer!

Brokerage fees are straight up bull. These are fees UPS collects for filing the border paperwork for you and are far too high for what they need to do. You can do your own paperwork and not incur these fees, or use any of the UPS express shipping methods and there'll be no brokerage fees because they're included in express shipments.

So is it the customs documents that they're hitting me up for? If so, the seller should have put them together, no? I know whenever I've sent something overseas I've had to prepare customs documents.