American buyer begged us for a part they scoured the world, but we don't do international.  We gave in and 'paid the price'... Changed listing for USA postage.  MyPost entry.  Send.

Week later 'Return to Sender' ?  Open case with Australia Post.  "You didn't do tariff entry" ?

You need Zonos account to pay buyers tariff !  So why doesn't MyPost tell you that in the postage entry and why didn't the Post Office tell us at the counter.  Item got to Melbourne Airport Mail Centre prior to take-off and BINGO 'no VISA' !  Return to sender.  No $29 postage refund.  Bad luck.

Australia Post were very CLEAR about that one !  (MONEY FOR JAM) <SENDER BEWARE> [LESSON LEARNT]

"As the required conditions for sending to the United States were not met, we regret to advise that a postage refund is not available for this article."

Yeah looks like they’re shifting to Delivered Duty Paid now, so the seller gets billed first through Zonos and then has to build that into the item price or shipping somehow.
I haven’t seen eBay roll out anything clean for it yet, which is going to be messy for people already dealing with thin margins and bulky items.
If you regularly ship from australia to the USA, this breakdown was actually useful since it explains the different shipping options and transit times.
Express stuff with DHL or FedEx can land in 2–5 days but sea freight can take 20–40 days, so I guess more sellers will lean toward couriers if customs processing gets stricter.

It's so backward that eBay USA does not add customs for US buyers and their international purchases. It's almost like they don't want US buyers to shop globally. Maybe there's a political tech bro motivation on a domestic level?

It's also puzzling because eBay Australia was quick to add 10% GST automatically for international purchases when Scott Morrison's government introduced the GST for all international purchases.  eBay has managed customs for most countries this way.

For the time being, I exclude US shipping. It's a shame to lose these customers but I refuse paying their custom fees.

I just had Zonos take money out of my bank account for a shipment to the USA, without telling me in advance that they would do this. There seems to be no way on Ebay to add an additional fee to listings for the USA, which is the sensible thing, since we now have our income eaten into even more for sales to there. Fees are now something like 50% of the process before I manufacture or package an item. Utterly ridiculous.

Can someone please explain to me as if I'm a 3 yr old ...

If I put an item up for auction that sells for over $150 and it's won by a buyer in the USA how do I post to it them ?

Does DHL and UPS do all the tarrifs with out me having to do anything?

Thank you in advance.

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/letters/blog.pl?/pl/2025/10/1761579440.html

……and the arguments continue

I'm not a commercial seller or conducting a business for the purposes of selling on eBay, so Zonos isn't really an option for me.  I sold an item, the buyer paid and AusPost charged me a tariff over the counter, as label generation within eBay no longer works, and the buyer paid less than what it was going to cost me to send it.

eBay support asked me to just message the seller to ask them to pay extra, but I believe that's a T&C violation (plus, bids/payment = contract of sale).  I was able to get support to refund/credit me the difference, but this is not  process I ever want to undergo again.

Until this is built in as part of label generation, or included as part of eBay's global shipping program, I don't think sending to the states from Australis is feasible.

Has anyone lodged over the counter as of yet and not used zono's instead paying the tariff the same time you pay postage and used your mypost discount.

Has there been any update on the tariff? How are we, the sellers, supposed to collect the tariff? I have had to cancel upwards of 30 orders going to the US.

The items I've shipped to the US since 22nd September have now been processed through my Zonos account. They each have their own individual order showing on the "Orders" page.

All of these shipments are exempt from the tariff, and the amount of $0.00 "Duty charge" shows accordingly on each order.

Now I'm just waiting for Zonos to raise an invoice for the $1.69 clearance fee incurred for each item. 

Boy O Boy this is confusing.

How do we collect the tarrifs from the buyers ?

I logged in from the ebay USA website to look ay my listings and there is no mention of tariffs needing to be paid by the buyer.

Using Zonos ' get a quote' it looks like my buyers will need to pay 30% tariffs.but i have no idea how to get $ from them ?

Thank you all for the replies! Most kind of you all to help me out. Have a great day!

@uncle_alberts_treasure, there should be a field in your Zonos profile / account setup where you enter your MyPost account number.  I had to do it on mine.  The account number is in your account profile page in the MyPost website.

Hi Fellow Sellers,

I just posted a vintage linen tea towel to US yesterday at the local Post Office who had no idea we could send again. Anyway, it was accepted and lodged. I  put all the details in the Customs form (tariff code, country of origin, price etc) and have no idea how the Zonos works but have linked the Aus Post account to it. There are no updates in Zonos about my order/shipment or how to link it (thought it was all automatically done?). Tonight I've checked the tracking and it says does not meet Custom requirements? I have no idea what it that means?

Any thoughts/suggestions? 

Thank you so much!

I sent 10 parcels yesterday morning first thing after Australia Post opened up for US Shipping

Using zonos item quoter I looked up several items from handbags to car parts

The respective Tariff cost came up as expected with the Tariff Code to use for those types of items

I was actually testing if exempt items like CD's, Records, Magazines etc. would come up with 0 Tariff applicable and it actually did. 

This rightly or wrongly gave me the confidence to go ahead and ship my parcels as all items that I sent should be Tariff free

Looking on Zonos today though I see no orders...Not sure if this is correct or not

But I looked up status of the parcels and they have been cleared by customs awaiting international departure

If any new info comes to light related to my experience, I will update this thread

I have created a Zonos account, but I'm not putting in my card details until I get another US order come through.

If using Zonos still seems too complex, I'll keep sending US orders under $100 as a gift.

Hi all, I created an account with Zonos today. It’s not a very clear website as to the fees etc, clear as mud in fact. I found out more by going through the discussion here. The Website doesn’t take into account sole traders or individual sellers from these types of platforms. 

In addition to them requiring a website which most of us won’t have, I had to use the website address from this platform. Even to send them a message a website address is required on the contact us page. 

I have a few items that I sell a lot into the US so I’ve increased my prices by 20% on those items for the moment taking into account it looks like we would be have to pay 15% import duties but obviously selling fees will increase with the increase in prices so I added 20% to these items. 

Another thing to take into account is to sign up you have to add credit card details into their system. I wonder how safe these will be with another external company having access to them. It’s not like companies holding large data haven’t been breached before! And also worried they have access to charge every 24 hours they state. Anyway that’s my two bobs worth for what it’s worth. 

Spoke with Ebay last week about how to collect and remit the tariff. Ebay usually collects VAT and other fees directly from the international buyer & remits the funds directly to their country's Customs (and charges the sellers the usual Final Value Fee!) When I asked if this would be the same with the US tariffs, they had little information and began by saying the seller had to collect the tariff charges themselves, suggesting messaging the buyer to pay the extra. When I pointed out that this was not very practical - how would I invoice that if the buyer had already paid? - they went off to get more info.
This is what Ebay help page says on sales tax: "If your delivery address is in one of the US states where either the seller or eBay is required to charge sales tax, the tax will be included in the order total at checkout." This indicates Ebay adds it to the invoice. The Customer Service person came back with the following - "Yes when buyer pays for the item, relevant charges are applied on the order once payment is done and same will appear in invoice as well".
Frankly, I'm not convinced! I'm considering adding the expected fees to my US postage policies until I can be sure. It's easier to refund the difference than try to collect the shortfall.

Anyone had issues with the Zonos website?  I've had missing top menu bar problems in Chrome (using Firefox fixed the problem) but then inside the account area the pop-up billing / card entry window had no  white background colour so all the text was overlapping over what was behind it.  I had to carefully read text over text to work it out.  Plus all the form input fields have no border and are white on a white background, so you have to guess where they are to click into them.  So dumb.

A very poorly-made website.

Now the 20th September with 2 days to go until shipping is resumed with no update from eBay since 26th August

I have 10 parcels to be posted with a total value of $2k, postage already paid by buyers. Looks like I will be up for $200 + $20 + $1.65x10 in tariffs and extras costs to pay without any chance to collect from buyers

Most of my expensive items go to US buyers.

As people have stated, you cannot put a handling fee as that will affect all buyers, and you cannot increase prices overall just to cope with one set of buyers either

...and just saying exclude postage to the US. That is not an option

C'mon eBay - Please enlighten us soon

On another account I have an item for sale for $800. The most likely buyer will be from the US and received an offer of 600 which I would gladly accept but can't post it yet. They have since come back with 680 but still I can't accept until I know I can send.

As it is a medical device I want it gone before it is obsolete but it is used and not made here, most likely Germany so different tariffs but as it has no packaging how can you tell.

All up I must be looking at close to if not over $200 in costs which is a bit if something goes wrong and it is returned with only the eBay fees being refundable. I thought international sales where risky before but this is now a lot worse 

In case any one wonders what it is it's a drill you use for eye surgery bit like a dentist drill.

Adding a 'handling fee' to cover the tariff is all well and good, but that is something Ebay should processing for us through the checkout.

To my knowledge, the shipping rates we set for items are unable to be differentiated based on locality, so adding a 'handling fee' would just increase the price for anyone overseas, no matter where they are from.

There's also the issue of goods that are exempt from the tariff, such as CDs, LPs and books. The lovely people at my local post office had no idea if Australia Post was still going to send parcels without any tariff code. There doesn't seem to be any any information as yet on the Aust. Post website about this either.  

I would like to know what the admin fee will be and if it is the admin fee the US customs website says is between $80-200. 

What I would like to know is this- do we add all those fees onto any items we sell to the US or does Ebay add them on? Because if we have to pay them ourselves, it isn't worthwhile selling them. 

Shipments resuming next week:

Australia Post is pleased to inform our customers that we will resume postal services to the United States (US) and its Overseas Territories on Monday, 22 September 2025, three days ahead of schedule.

No info yet on how it all works exactly.

This is from Australia Post [Changes to US import tariffs explained]

As part of Australia Post’s partnership with Zonos®, Australia Post business customers with a Zonos® Verified Account are only required to pay duties (based on the Country of Origin of the product), and the Zonos® handling fee (10% of payable duties) and admin processing fee (flat fee). This will be invoiced to you directly by Zonos®.

So we pay a tariff based on [country of origin + type of product] and then pay 10% of the duty plus a flat fee that I can't find listed. I think I'll wait for some sanity to return to the US because this is all too hard.

eBay really need to update and inform sellers about what’s happening and how it’s all going to work. 

If no changes are made then the US buyer will be charged taxes by Ebay then we go to Auspost and they charge us tariffs.  Its double dipping if no changes are made.  Interesting that the email from Auspost says registration to Zoros is free BUT they dont say that you will charge $1.69 per transaction plus 10% of the duty amount.   So I sell something for $700 which has a 10% tarriff on it so get charged $70 then on top Zoros will charge $8.69 for that transaction.  Ripoff - I am thinking of telling all US buyers that will only send by courier.

I just got this update from AP via email:

Australia Post is pleased to update our business customers that we plan to resume postal services to the United States (US) and its overseas territories on or before, Thursday 25 September 2025.

I found it... it's on the Awaiting Shipment page:

A week on and still nothing from eBay, but as the US courts found these tariffs illegal, its unlikely they're going to spend the dollars until the Supreme Court makes its ruling.

Hi, As with most things, the seller has a cost which for a general application AU to US will be 10% unless your product has another tariff rate applicable. Mine are all tariff free up to 29th August and then the general 10% rule will apply. Other posts here have confirmed my understanding that the seller will need to absorb the cost or increase prices to compensate. Obviously this will increase the price and the ebay fees, so you cannot just add 10%, perhaps 12 or 15% ?  Yes, Prez Don has stated tariffs to be paid by the seller (reality is the USA buyer will need to cough up extra as we are already at minimal margins) in the exporting country and sent to the USA as a monthly(?) remittance. That is the sort of service Zonos provides. It is very similar to the EU VAT process except that eBay does that collection automatically. Shame they could not simply provision a similar feature for our US deliveries. We have shutdown our US store and added USA to the list of countries we will not ship to from eBay Australia until this mess is sorted. It is odd to see our list of blocked countries:  Belarus, Mexico, Russia, United States. I'd laugh but it is not a joke. 

Buyer normally pays the tariff ebay will need to implement this at the checkout. NO SELLER in their right mind should pay the tariff out of their own pocket thats just crazy to do so.

Still very early days, but considering how closely Ebay and Australia Post work together (and need each other), one can only presume Zonos will be integrated into the Ebay payment system for US sales and collect the tax at checkout, as it does for the UK, EU, etc. To do otherwise just wouldn't make sense...but then sense seems so last century.