International purchases (Shein, AliExpress, Amazon): order held at customs, lost, or damaged

How much customs duty you pay, based on your order’s value

The core rule is the same whether your order arrives through Serpost (the postal regime, Importa Fácil) or through a private courier like DHL or FedEx (the entrega rápida regime): it all depends on the declared FOB or CIF value of the shipment.

• Up to US$ 200: the shipment is exempt from ad valorem duty and IGV. SUNAT classifies it as “direct distribution” and releases it for immediate delivery.
• Between US$ 200 and US$ 2,000: you pay 4% ad valorem on the CIF value (product cost + insurance + freight), plus 18% IGV on the sum of the CIF value and the already-calculated ad valorem. An official example: a shipment with a CIF value of US$ 1,000 pays US$ 40 in ad valorem and US$ 187.20 in IGV, a total of US$ 227.20 in duties.
• Over US$ 2,000: it no longer qualifies for the simplified regime (Importa Fácil or entrega rápida) and requires a regular import declaration, usually with the help of a customs broker.

To pay, SUNAT generates a Declaración Importa Fácil (DIF) for postal shipments, or a Declaración Simplificada de Envíos de Entrega Rápida (DSEER) for courier shipments. In both cases, you download it for free from SUNAT’s portal and pay at an authorized bank before the package is released to you.

“Held at customs” doesn’t always mean something’s wrong

Your package showing up as held or under review doesn’t automatically mean something went wrong. The courier’s entrega rápida process includes a channel assignment step: green channel for immediate release, red channel for physical inspection. A shipment in the red channel is simply being reviewed before it continues on its way.

The most common reason for a “hold,” though, is that your shipment went over US$ 200 and generated a payment declaration (a DIF or DSEER) that you haven’t paid yet. Until you pay the corresponding duties at an authorized bank, the package stays held — not because of a Customs error, but because the system is waiting for your payment.

The deadlines running while your package waits

For postal shipments, SUNAT sets a two-month retention period, counted from the transmission of the deconsolidated DEP (DEP desconsolidado). If that deadline passes without you having requested your package’s customs destination — that is, without paying and claiming it, or without requesting its return or re-forwarding — legal abandonment occurs.

That doesn’t mean you automatically and irreversibly lose the package. The same SUNAT page says a shipment in legal abandonment can be recovered by the owner or consignee by paying the customs tax debt, service fees, and other applicable costs, as long as they do so before SUNAT disposes of the goods. In other words, legal abandonment is a serious warning, not an immediate point of no return — but it isn’t indefinite either.

If instead you want to return the package to the sender because you no longer need it or the product isn’t what you expected, there’s a return or re-forwarding procedure with its own deadline: SERPOST files the request (Anexo V) with Customs within the retention period or up to 30 days after it expires, so ask SERPOST in good time. Note that the return doesn’t proceed if the goods are damaged, if you already requested their customs destination, or if they were seized or abandoned by the sender’s own decision.

For private courier shipments, the specific deadline procedure (DESPA-PG.28) is different from Serpost’s and we don’t cover it here in the same level of detail; in practice, each courier company also applies its own storage policies before returning an unclaimed package, so it’s worth checking directly with whichever company is holding your shipment.

Who to complain to if the package is lost or arrives damaged

This is the most confusing question, because it involves three different parties, and each one answers for something different.

If the problem is with the customs process itself — your package was held longer than seems reasonable, you think the duty was miscalculated, or you believe SUNAT violated one of your rights during the process — the right channel is SUNAT’s Taxpayer and Customs User Ombudsman Office (Defensoría del Contribuyente y Usuario Aduanero), whose functions include receiving and processing complaints, claims and suggestions from taxpayers, customs users and citizens about SUNAT actions that violate their rights.

If the package was lost or damaged during international transport, the situation is more complex: the shipping contract is generally between the courier (or the postal service) and the sender — that is, the seller — not you as the buyer. That means your most direct and fastest complaint isn’t against the courier, but against the seller or the platform, typically through their own buyer-protection system (automatic refunds, disputes, shipment tracking).

If the seller or platform refuses to resolve the problem, that’s where Peruvian consumer rights come in. Since November 2025, Law N° 32495 requires that “toda plataforma digital de comercio electrónico” (“every digital e-commerce platform”) — without distinguishing whether it’s domiciled in Peru or not — have a Libro de Reclamaciones, physical or virtual, visible and accessible. And since February 2026, Legislative Decree N° 1729 goes a step further: it requires suppliers not domiciled in Peru that sell to the Peruvian market to maintain, at minimum, a working email address to handle questions, complaints, suggestions, and returns.

The real limitation worth knowing beforehand: the law requires these platforms to have a complaints channel, but enforcing an Indecopi sanction against a company with no tax domicile, legal representative, or assets in Peru is much harder than against a local supplier. In practice, your best odds of getting your money back are still the platform’s own dispute system (Amazon, AliExpress, and Shein have relatively responsive refund policies for undelivered or damaged orders), and a complaint to Indecopi works better as an additional backstop than as your first move.

Products you can’t import even within the value limit

The US$ 200 or US$ 2,000 threshold isn’t the only rule. There are specific restrictions by product type, independent of cost: cell phones and similar devices require a permit from the Ministry of Transport and Communications, medications need authorization from the relevant health authority, and used clothing and used vehicle parts are flatly prohibited from import under these simplified regimes. If your purchase might fall into one of these categories, it’s worth checking before you pay, not after the package gets held.