I recently brought a few Lipos from HK and they were shipped through Fed Ex priority as that was the only shipping given by HK.  The items arrived in just a few days.... 3-4 days only.  BUT Fed Ex charged me Rs 1700/- + as customs and handling charges.  When I asked the local Fed Ex office to give me the details of customs invoice of Indian Customs they could not give me anything.  Just one paper wherein they had calculated the customs at 28% of the estimated cost.  Further the packet had a green label of Indian Customs stating "CLEAR".  The Fed Ex guy in the office could not explain that too.

In my understanding.... the packet was cleared by Indian customs without any customs charges / penalties.... Fed Ex just calculated the perceived Customs duty at 28% and added its Rs 300 as handling charges and made me pay the rs 1700/- plus.

Now I do not understand the following issues....
1.   Why is Fed Ex so hesitant to give me the original customs invoice? ... whenever customs has been levied to my EMS parcels the post office has always given me the customs invoice signed by the customs officer.
2.   When the entire postage was paid upfront why did Fed Ex charge me Rs 300 as handling charges?
3.   If the handling charges were to get my packet cleared by Fed Ex they should have indicated the cost of it in the initial shipping cost itself.  Why did they charge me this amount at a later date.  EMS etc never charge anything like this.
4.   If the packed has a green lable stating "CLEAR" from customs how come Fed Ex has charged me the customs.

It appears that Fed Ex is making money from hapless people like us and charging nearly twice the shipping cost in a adulterant manner. OR else the officer at Fed Ex office should have clarified my doubts and given me the relevant papers as asked by me.

Is anyone else also facing this problem from Fed Ex?

If so... lets us all ask Customs if our packet was charged any customs duty and if not.... we need to file a fraudulent activity complaint against fed Ex for fleecing hapless customers.

do join in and find out the truth....

I got a few lipo's from fedex as well , i was charged 1800 for them though a comple custom duty chalan was givin . All packages that i have recieved till date wether they were charged with custom duty or not has the 'cleared custom's' stamp on them .

Same here, all my parcels irrespective of duty or not had the cleared stamp.

And I think the handling charge is wrt to the duty. Had it been duty free, they would not have collected handling charges. Also, lipo parcels are more prone to duty as far as I have seen till now.

FedEx is big fat scumbags, they have their own CHA. I have faced problem lot of time, when they held package and ask for value proof. No matter what ever document you provide they will keep on asking some new documents. If your package is stucked for a long time then you will get a call from som Fedex guy will say Customs officer is asking for money (which means Fedex CHA wants some)

You (or we) as the customer as we have been charged custom duty on our shipment its our right to ask for Custom Invoice that they provide to Fedex. So we should, i always do but i get the same response and you guys have got.

The irony is that on similar packages or even costlier ones..... I paid just 10% customs duty when they were posted through EMS.  why is fed Ex package being charged at 28%??

Not only Fedex, I think even DHL and all express couriers do the same way.
They provide of their own receipt and not actual customs department receipt. There is no proof that they pay the amount collected from us to the customs department.
Other members may confirm.

Well if this is so.... then they are all making a fool of us all....

The customs rate they charged you looks correct for rc equipment. There are lower duty rates and exemptions for other commodities however rc equipment is charged the highest rates. Even if you get the customs invoice you won't be able to escape paying lesser duty.

The issue is whether they pay the duty collected from us to Customs department or not ?
In Kuwait, the courier company while clearing the shipment at customs they list out all the shipments and specify duties against each shipment and pay the duty to the customs. A copy of this as well as their own invoice is provided to me.

Is there any mention of reference number in the invoices provided by them which links it to customs dept? Ideally they should have something like that if they are not doing as it is in Kuwait.

Its hard to believe they would indulge in such practices of not paying up to the customs after collecting duty from us. There may be a possibility where individuals or a franchise might be doing otherwise. However they should at all costs provide us with invoices, atleast the ones they give out.

There is simply no reference to any invoice from customs or which appears to be that of customs...

Green Label of clear says the item is comes under "free to import" so it is obvious that any packet which is free to import route through fedex will be labelled with it.
It reaches to any one in couple of days so person should be ready to pay cost for it. Economy mail is like bus or train travelling while express means flight travelling so cost will always be there.