AliExpress has had enough of the EU! It still pays the customs duty and the new EU fee for you — just buy three little things

Starting July 1, the EU charges a 3 € customs duty for each type of goods from China, and a new handling fee of 2 € has been added to it too—so one cheap product would cost you 6,15 € more in your AliExpress checkout. The Bundle Deals Duty Covered promo, which AliExpress never officially announced anywhere, still pays these fees for you. What’s new is that for the first time its page counts down the time left until the promo ends—up to Thursday, Nov 19 at 8:59, exactly when the 11.11 sale ends.

Countdown is running until Thursday morning

In the top right corner of the sale page there is the text “Ends: Nov 19, 08:59”. The OEUD codes from the 11.11 clearance sale, which were directly below it, AliExpress switched off for Slovakia on Nov 13, but it did not cancel the customs duty event itself. The promotion has been running since September and until now it had no fixed end date, so we don’t know whether AliExpress will extend it after the clearance sale or really turn it off. If you want to be sure, you should buy by Thursday morning.

That the promo is still working is visible right in the cart panel on the right. When we added three cables together in the Electronics category for 8,25 €, the panel showed that AliExpress would pay the customs duty and shipping would be free.

We checked at checkout: from 17 € in fees, only 6 cents remained

We went through the entire purchase all the way to checkout on Sunday, October 25. In the cart there were Xiaomi MIJIA sunglasses for 17,81 € and two clips for the sunglasses for 2,78 € and 2,01 €, for a total of 22,60 €. AliExpress added estimated import fees of 17 €, but one line lower it reduced them by 16,94 € with the note AliExpress import charge reduction. We were supposed to pay 22,66 €, while without the promo that same cart would have cost 39,60 €.

The discount is made up of two items. The first is a fixed reward „Buy 3+, import charges on us“, which after the new fee was introduced increased from 3 € to 5 €—which is exactly the 3 € customs duty and the 2 € handling fee. The second, „Duty benefits“, covers the rest of the fees including VAT, and in our cart it amounted to 11,94 €.

In the fee breakdown, AliExpress listed customs duty of 14,96 € and a handling fee of 2,04 € for this cart. AliExpress doesn’t explain how it arrived at those numbers, and they don’t match the official formula either (3,69 € per type of goods and 2,46 € for the customs category). However, the discount covered almost everything, so at delivery you pay nothing extra.

How to get into the promo

The promo runs in a separate Bundle Deals channel, where you choose a category—for example Electronics, Chargers, Essentials, Sunglasses, Connectors, LED Lighting, Bags, or Toys—and add at least three products from it. The panel on the right shows how many items are still missing, and once the condition is met, AliExpress automatically deducts the discount on import fees at checkout and adds free shipping on top.

Watch out: each category has its own mini-cart, separate from the regular AliExpress cart, and products from different categories don’t add up together. So you can’t combine a protective glass, a cable, and a cleaning cloth into one promo order. Before paying, also check that all three products are ticked in the panel—because in our test the MIJIA glasses weren’t ticked after adding, and they weren’t counted toward the conditions.

What’s worth buying in the promo

There’s mostly small items for 1 to 10 € there, like screen protectors and phone cases, cables, connectors, chargers, eyeglass clips, sponges, hangers, or textile accessories. That’s exactly the kind of purchase where the deal saves you the most, because three different small items without it would cost you over 18 € in fees—often more than the item itself. Sometimes a branded piece shows up among them too, for example the original sunglasses Xiaomi MIJIA Classic Square, which we used in the test.

Verified again on 13. Nov: out of 35 € fees, only 6 cents remained

On Friday 13. Nov we checked the promotion in the checkout once more. We added six cables and adapters to the promo cart together for 18,36 €. Estimated import fees came to 35,20 €, and AliExpress reduced them by 35,14 € in the checkout by one line, so we paid only 6 cents in fees. That day, the coupon 11.11 was also still working and it took off another 3 €, but AliExpress codes for Slovakia were switched off shortly after.

The items from our cart are supposed to arrive between 24. and 30. Nov. If AliExpress codes for Slovakia turn on again, you’ll find them in this overview:

What to watch out for

The countdown on the page is the only end-of-promo information that AliExpress has made public, but they may change the conditions earlier. Before paying, always check whether in checkout there’s a line with the discount under the estimated fees.

Keep your order under €150, because within this limit there is a flat customs duty of €3 per type of goods. Above that, customs duty is calculated using the standard rates, and we didn’t test such an order with the promo. If you don’t want to rely on the promotion, choose products from European warehouses, where you don’t pay customs duty or any fee at all.

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