AGL EU – importing from China to Germany

With AGL EU, a seller can only import LCL from China to Germany (and no other EU countries). I did this recently. I’ve been importing to the USA and EU for some 7 years now (with various freight forwarders), and duties have always been calculated based on the commercial invoice. With this AGL process, the shipments land in the Netherlands, and are then transported to Germany. With this recent AGL shipment, I got slapped with such high duties that it wiped out a huge amount of my earnings in Germany. I kept writing the AGL team how this is possible, and why they calculate duties based on retail prices, where we have a markup and we incur expenses with Amazon fees. They never responded. I kept asking: why would any seller go that route??

Today I’ve received this generic email from AGL EU. And they talk about how duties are calculated. Again, can anyone make any sense of this?

Copying text from email (all the way to the end):

To continuously improve our Customs Brokerage services and support the growing number of Amazon Global Logistics (AGL) Selling Partners, Lily Maas has been appointed as our new customs brokerage service provider for imports through Netherlands ports. This change has been in effect since September 12, 2024.

What This Means for You – Netherlands Imports

As a Non-EU based Importer, the valuation of your goods is now based on the “deductive value” method, typically estimated at 28% to 33% of the retail value, depending on the goods. Through an arrangement with Dutch Customs, Lily Maas serves as the Importer of Record for your shipments, meaning you are not required to obtain an Economic Operators Registration and Identification (EORI) number.