Boston grandma Bonnie O’Connell got the surprise of the season when her attempt to snag a $22 Barbie doll for her granddaughter turned into an $800-plus customs nightmare.
O’Connell, who just wanted to wow her 4-year-old granddaughter with a Hockey League Barbie she spotted online, had no idea a mountain of red tape—and a mind-blowing tariff bill—awaited her.
Here’s how the holiday mayhem unfolded: The special-edition Barbie, proudly sporting a Professional Women’s Hockey League jersey, was only sold in Canada. Solution? O’Connell enlisted her cousin in Nova Scotia to pick up the toy and mail it stateside using FedEx. Easy, right? Not so fast!
Weeks went by. The doll made it to Boston, but then, out of nowhere, O’Connell received a jaw-dropping invoice: $802 demanded in tariffs for a package that was worth less than a dinner out. “I felt sick to my stomach,” O’Connell said to Boston’s WCVB in a dramatic retelling. “I was completely floored. Who pays $800 to import a Barbie?”
So, what went wrong? Turns out, the culprit was a paperwork blunder at the Canadian FedEx branch. Her cousin, when filling out shipping forms, didn’t notice that the Barbie’s value had been mistakenly entered as nearly $2,200 instead of the intended 22 bucks. That error, combined with former President Donald Trump’s new 35% tariff on goods crossing the border into the U.S., meant O’Connell was suddenly on the hook for a king’s ransom in import fees.
Adding insult to injury, O’Connell’s cousin signed off on the paperwork without catching the astronomical price listed. The grandmother was left baffled—and more than a little exasperated. “Why are you handing me a package with a bill like this?!” she exclaimed.
After a stressful back-and-forth, the whopper of a charge was finally wiped out, but not before O’Connell’s holiday gift shopping turned into a rollercoaster of confusion and headaches. “I adore my granddaughter, but nobody’s getting an $800 Christmas gift from me—that’s for sure!” she joked to local reporters.
FedEx has yet to provide an official comment regarding the international mix-up.
As new U.S. trade tariffs snare unsuspecting shoppers, O’Connell’s story serves as a wild warning: double-check those customs forms, or you could end up paying doll-ars instead of dollars.
