Chaos at the post office: What it costs to mail a package from Guam

By Rubyjane Buhain-Redila

I spent the end of the summer turning half of my closet into a small business. It took me roughly a month of work. Twenty-eight designer bags went up on Poshmark. I had sold there before, a Louis Vuitton for $1,700 among them, and I knew the drill: the app prepays your postage, you print and tape the label on a box with your item, stand in line and you’re done. Poshmark takes 20 percent off the top, but the process itself was simple.

Last month, the drill broke. I packaged an $850 bag and lined up at the same post office I had used a dozen times, but I was now charged a $95 fee before it could go anywhere. I thought there had to be a mistake.

I had already been in line for 40 minutes. There were no visible notice signs, at least not from where I stood. The clerks weren't offering explanations about the new online requirement. Almost everyone around me was on their phones, looking just as lost. Questions went off in every direction. Nobody had a straight answer, not even the employees behind the counter.

A man near me, pointing at his phone, told me I needed an app called Zonos. So I downloaded it. It asked where I was shipping from, the item's description, country of origin, value and weight for a bag that was already boxed and taped shut. I guessed. The app returned $85 in duties and $10.15 in "clearance and processing." I re-entered everything, certain I'd gotten something wrong. Same number. Then it asked me to authorize a company called Evolve Trade Services LLC to be my customs broker.

At the counter, I asked the clerk exactly what I was paying for, since I had already paid for postage. He seemed frustrated too, clearly dealing with the same confusion as the people ahead of me. “I can't help you here, because we are not U.S. Customs." If I didn’t have the QR code, he said, there was nothing he could do. 

I had another encounter at the post office that made me think about this differently. A Micronesian woman who seemed completely lost asked me to help her with the Zonos app. I walked her through it step by step. When we reached the payment section, she stopped. She told me she didn’t have a credit card or bank account she could use to make payments online.

When she explained her situation to the clerk, they told her what they had been telling everyone else: no QR code, no service. The woman looked defeated. 

I kept thinking about her situation. Guam is home to people from throughout Micronesia, many of whom may not have access to the online payment methods this system assumes everyone has. What are they supposed to do?

For the second item I sold, Zonos calculated nearly 20 percent of the item’s value in duties and fees, significantly more than the first package I shipped. I entered the information as accurately as I could, but I still couldn't understand why.

So I went home and read. 

Zonos doesn't charge the same percentage for every item. The calculation depends on the item's classification, origin, value and other details. So two bags selling for roughly the same amount can end up with very different charges, making the cost difficult for a small seller to predict.

The executive order that suspended the $800 de minimis exemption was signed in July 2025. For international postal shipments, the new system took effect August 29, 2025. But USPS didn’t extend the duty-collection process to mail being sent from Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands to the mainland until July 30 this year. 

Guam is a U.S. territory, but it is outside what the government calls the “customs territory of the United States.” For customs purposes, shipments from Guam to the 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico are treated differently from shipments within Guam.

The Zonos Prepay app was already working with USPS before this change. USPS awarded Zonos a contract in 2022 to provide technology for international services, including duty and tax calculations. When the de minimis exemption was suspended, Zonos became one of two companies initially certified by CBP as a “Qualified Party” authorized to collect and remit duties on international mail.

ADVERTISEMENT

In November 2025, CBP awarded Zonos a pilot contract to test the technology for tariff classification, data verification, data enrichment and duty collection.

Then, in April 2026, Zonos acquired Evolve Trade Services, the customs brokerage company named on the power-of-attorney form I had just signed. 

None of that proves anything improper, but it does make me wonder how this system came together so quickly and why one company now sits in so many parts of it. 

Poshmark already takes its cut from the sale. The $95 is on top of that. I’m out $95 on a bag I already photographed, listed, packed and sold. For a small operation like mine, that kind of fee on every shipment adds up quickly. It can be the difference between a side hustle that’s worth the time and one that actually loses money.

Last month, Sen. Jesse Lujan asked the USPS directly for an exemption, pointing out that Guam imports roughly 90 percent of what it consumes and warning that the policy would worsen economic hardship for residents and military families. The USPS local office said it would forward the request to headquarters. No exemption came.

In Congress, there is now a bill that would restore de minimis treatment for shipments originating in the four affected territories. H.R. 5960, the Territorial De Minimis Exemption Act, was introduced in November 2025 by territorial delegates Kimberlyn King-Hinds of the CNMIs, Aumua Amata Radewagen of American Samoa, James Moylan of Guam and Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The bill remains in the House Ways and Means Committee.

The four delegates can advocate for the territories and participate in committee proceedings, but they cannot vote on final passage of legislation on the House floor. 

So for now, this is where we are—and I still have 26 bags left to sell.

Subscribe to

our digitfadl

monthly issue