Solid boundaries, clearly communicated. Giving the customer a choice without hurting their own bottom line. I agree. Excellent handling of the situation.
Pretty standard business practice for the U.S. is "The Customer Can Always Get Fucked." There's a lot of money that's basically just been stolen from me because I got tired with fighting the company to just ship me the thing I paid for, and I either bought the thing somewhere else or decided I didn't want it anymore. Most companies don't even actually have customer service, just chatbots or outsourced chumps who only seem to exist for Americans to yell at, because they have no authority to do, view, or fix anything.
Haha, unreal. Not American so I didn't realise how bad the customer service was. To be fair, the chatbot crap has taken over in the UK too and you often have to request to talk to a real person. My partner always just phones the companies directly and mostly gets her issues sorted out that way.
I mean technically it's not the company's responsibility. If you've ordered something and they've sent it in a reasonable time frame and it just gets charged extra on entry. It's not the company putting the price up, it's your own government, so you don't really have a recourse.
I may don't know how the law works but I believe (at least in my country) if you agree on the conditions you can't pull a Darth Vader and alter the conditions after signing/ordering and paying.
Now if there is a clause that states otherwise this may change.
But I agree, at least they are open and upfront with it.
They are not changing anything. They are warning the customer import charges wil incur if the purchase proceeds. They gain nothing and stand to lose a sale.
I would change "not always" to "practically never". Every e-commerce site I have ever used warns you that you are responsible for import duties if shipped internationally.
Completely agree, I was trying to avoid the "well actually" response.
I've had a number of items get held by FedEx (or whoever) because of import duties over the years and I've had to pay the delivery company to get it released.
This is a well worn path, and kudos to this one to warn you that new tarrifs are in place, the customer would be subject to them, and giving them an option to decline it.
The doctrine is called force majeure. Most contracts have a force majeure clause.
If an external factor makes a contract impossible as agreed, the contract can be made void under force majeure. This is very common, and suddenly applied tariffs would likely be covered by a force majeure clause because neither party were responsible for them.