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NZ Government in bed with the scammers

We have all received those scam emails or text messages purporting to be from a courier company or the Post Office and which claim that you need to pay a small fee before your package can be delivered to you.

Gullible folk simply click on the link and hand over their credit card numbers without doing anything like due dilligence on such messages.

Give the volume of packages now sent internationally it's not hard to see why busy people who may well be expecting a consignment to be arriving in the next few days would fall victim to this scam -- only to discover that their card details are now on the dark web or there have been huge charges racked up in their name.

Thanks to the ease with which this can be done, many of the scam emails and messages look pretty convincing and genuine to all but the most careful Netizens.

As luck would have it, I received one of these over the weekend. Here it is, as an example (but perhaps not a good one) of what I'm talking about:

Now in the past, most of us would have simply deleted this email and gotten on with our lives, safe in the knowledge that unless the item was over $400 in value and thus subject to GST, there would be no fees payable at this end of the journey.

However,as of April 1, that has all changed -- and this isn't cruel joke on the part of the NZ Government, even though it seems like it is.

The reality is that now there *is* a fee involved in the delivery of international packages valued at less than NZ$1,000 and courier companies are collecting it on behalf of NZ Customs.

I thought we'd sorted out the mess that is GST collection when the NZ Government began demanding that all overseas vendors added GST to the price of the product and charged it at the point of sale. Indeed, that has been pretty much what most of the big etailers such as Temu and AliExpress have done -- so why this extra fee all of a sudden?

The official reasons can be found in this NZ Customs brochure.

I have to sound that many of those reasons are specious at best or even downright insulting.

The super-crazy thing is that the NZ Government itself used to allow the GST-free importation of low-value products (under NZ$400) because they deemed the cost of processing such a small transaction was too expensive -- and now they're expecting couriers to process a much, much smaller one?

The reality is that although the fee is just $2.21+GST per package, you can be pretty sure that courier companies will be adding their own "processing fee" on top of that -- they're not about to become unpaid levy-collectors for government. Somehow, collecting up to $60 in GST at the border for packages up to NZ$400 in value is deemed uneconomic by this government but collecting a $2.21 levy is just fine?

However, I digress...

The real reason for today's column is not to complain about the levy but to complain that it means scammers will now have a field-day. The true cost will be far and above the couple of bucks that will be added to every personal import under $1K. The true cost will be measured in the fact that now people are expecting such a fee, scammers will have a much easier time fleecing folk of their hard-earned cash via a scam that used to be easy to spot.

I think the courier companies also need a rap over the knuckles on this one.

Why are they carging the recipient and not the sender for this levy?

People who purchase a service (ie: to have their package delivered to someone in NZ) should be able to expect that the service will be conducted without further charges over and above the amount they've already paid. That the recipient is going to be out of pocket is unreasonable IMHO. Remember that online retailers are already billing GST, why can't courier companies bill the levy when the package is consigned?

This should be super-easy, as witnessed by the ease and frequency with which those courier companies already add a multitude of surcharges (such as a fuel levy or security levy) to certain destinations when it suits them to.

Come on DHL and the rest of you, step up to the plate and simply charge the sender as part of the price they pay to have that package sent. This would reduce YOUR costs and those of the recipient -- whilst also making life much harder for scammers. Why not use this as a point of distinction in what is a crowded market for international courier/freight services?

This becomes even more important when you realise that people often use a courier because they want stuff urgently. Why pay a premium price for a service if you know that there's a good chance that delivery times will be extended by one or two days while you notify recipients of the fee to be paid and then wait for that transaction to occur and be processed????

Clearly, our government has no clue of the Pandora's box it has opened in levying this fee. Perhaps they will only realise what they've done after legions of "average folk" start complaining that they've been scammed.

Carpe Diem folks!

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