I’m afraid my wedding sari is destroyed

Aspirinal student Nicole Lobo moved to the United States in late August after a year in the UK, delivering 10 boxes of possessions at home in Philadelphia, which she expected to arrive within a few days.

Six weeks later, she is still waiting for the shipment – and is afraid of being lost, destroyed by UPS while the company struggles to deal with a flood of packages facing new customs and tariff rules.

“It was horrifying,” says the 28-year-old, who was informed last month that her boxes would be thrown away, leaving her to make frantic phone calls and send emails to try to get out of the result.

This is a test that many UPS customers face after the Trump administration at the end of August Stopped allowing parcels worth less than $ 800 to enter the United States without checking, taxes or tariffsS

The decision sharply makes approximately 4 million packages each day, subject to new, more severe processing and documentation rules.

Because the influx leads to longer times of processing and higher, sometimes unexpected costs in the industry, some UPS customers like Nicole say that their packages are lost in the lag.

“It is out of understanding for me,” says Gianani Mohan, a 29-year-old engineer living in Michigan who also spent hours in detention and sends multiple emails as a tracking signal lists a box sent by her parents in India as set to discard.

The plot was holding her wedding dress, which was also worn by her mother, her grandmother’s surgery and wedding photos, among other subjects.

“I literally called them on the phone,” she says. “Everything there is very close to my heart.”

Oregon -based Mizuba Tea Co, which has been using UPS for more than a decade to import matches from Japan, has five shipments together worth over $ 100,000 in processing.

The company has received controversial signals of their status, including some, saying that the objects have been set for disposal.

“My whole team is mainly on Scan Watch,” says Lauren Paris, who runs business with his family and is now beginning to worry about the leakage of the inventory if the limb continues.

“It is simply clear to us that current import systems are not ready to cope with the clean amount of volume and documents.”

Importers usually have 10 days after the goods enter the United States to submit documentation on goods, pay rates and other fees, allowing the package to go to its recipient.

But the rapid changes to the Trump administration in tariff rules make it difficult to meet customs requirements, according to shipping companies such as FedEx and UPS, which offer customs services and often act as recorders.

For example, businesses are already responsible for paying tariffs for any steel or aluminum contained in a product and, in many cases, vouchers for their country of origin – information that many businesses, let alone their shipping companies, do not know.

“Due to the changes to the import rules of us, we see many packages that are not able to clear customs because of the missing or incomplete information about the shipment required for the customs authorizations,” a UPS spokesman said.

Although acknowledging longer delivery times, the company said it still cleaned more than 90% of international packages within a day after arrival.

The spokesman said his policy was to contact customers three times before moving to dispose of a package.

But seven people interviewed by the BBC, including several businesses responsible for sending the items, said they had not received any UPS word for problems before seeing the tracking signal that their package would be discarded.

FedEx, another major player in the industry, said he usually did not destroy packages unless he was directed to do so by the sender.

Nicole, a graduate student, says she was asked to provide more information about her items, which she did immediately in early September.

She no longer heard until she saw the ejection notice at the end of September. After the BBC was interested in her package, the tracking information was first updated in weeks to say it was “on the way” by raising her hopes.

In the same way, Janani says the company visited last week after the BBC contacted, for several more documents and its package seems to have already cleared the customs.

But for business, chaos has already had real costs.

Swedish candy exporter Swedish candy says more than 700 packages they sent through UPS to customers in the United States in the first weeks of September have been detained.

Co-founder Tobias Johansson says the business has passed to FedEx after realizing the problem and his deliveries are already arriving without incidents, although the process took several days longer than before.

But the lost packages, some of which are reported to be destroyed, cost the company approximately $ 50,000 for recovery without including the costs incurred in the delivery and mediation fees.

“It was a big hit for us and we haven’t received answers for anything yet,” says Johansson.

Experts say the pulsation effects are felt in the supply chain, even on business, such as Mizuba, which do not import into shipments, using $ 800 release from the rates known as De Minimis.

“This can be felt almost throughout the board,” says Bernie Hart, Vice President of Flexport Business Development, Logistics and Customs Business.

In a conversation with financial analysts last month, FedEx leaders said it was a “very stressful period” for their customers, especially smaller players.

“This is a big wind,” said Chief Executive Officer Raj Submanian, warning that changes in the commercial environment are likely to lead to $ 1 billion this year, including $ 300 million in additional costs as the company is hiring and faces other expenses related to the new rules.

But John Pickett, Vice President of the National Foreign Trade Delivery Chain Policy, which is many shipping companies, fear that problems can get worse before they get better.

The total volumes of trade last month were less than typical, partly because many businesses rushed goods in the United States early to beat the rates.

“There has always been this prevailing thought that companies will understand it,” he says. “What we saw was that it was much more difficult than anyone expected.”