Trade Professionals Report a 'Clunky' ACE Following IEEPA Refunds Decision

As of March 4, 330,566 importers had paid IEEPA tariffs, according to a March 6 CBP declaration to the Court of International Trade. However, only 21,423 entities -- primarily importers or their brokers -- have completed the set-up process for electronic refunds. That's despite CBP ending its use of paper checks for refunds on Feb. 6.

Importers who haven't set up electronic refund can still get a refund, but their brokers may need to file a refund claim, and the funds will go to the broker, who can transfer them to the importer, said Tom Gould, CEO of Tom Gould Customs Consulting.

Åsa Emanuelsson, a broker and co-founder of Velody Trade, said there has been a lot of increased traffic and difficulty in getting support. She said she would get “cookie cutter” responses to her questions.

“The responses that come back have been, in my experience, extremely top level and [have] definitely not addressed the full issue to the scenarios that I have run across,” she said.

Emanuelsson said she thinks so many people hadn’t signed up before the decision because of how much has changed in the past year.

“I just feel like people don't believe it until they see it and feel like it might be a waste of time,” she said.

CBP didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The increased traffic in the system for account set-ups only spiked after the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA tariffs were unconstitutional, said Graham Anderson, co-founder of Importal. He said companies rarely get refunds so they never signed up for an ACE account prior to the ruling.

He said the core issue he faced was trying to access the ACE portal.

“It's just so clunky and it's really difficult to work with,” Anderson said.

He said a problem he’s run into consistently is when the account owner leaves, and the company cannot log into ACE, requiring the company to go through a reassignment process.

“I would say that 99% of my customer base that had never used ACE is either A, stuck in the help desk, B, throwing their hands up and going, ‘I can't even do this’ and C, [trying] to find alternative routes to basically get a refund back without ACE access,” Anderson said.

Anderson said he’s seen foreign importers, who don’t have a U.S. bank account, and some importers who are “frustrated with ACE” send CBP a 4811 form to route refunds through their broker.

“I've been warning importers, like, we still have time,” he said. “Let's see this process through. Let's get you access to ACE before you start just giving your refunds to some customs broker you worked with once or twice.”

The wait for help is long, Anderson said. His customers will call and email, and when they get hold of ACE support, the support will tell them that the queue is incredibly long.

“I'll give Customs credit, at least they're responding, at least they're letting people know this is not like an overnight fix,” he said.

International Trade Today contacted the ACE Account Service Desk, which responded the same day: “Due to a high volume of requests, If you are submitting a request for a new ACE Importer Account and have an existing CBP Form 5106 (record) on file with CBP, we strongly recommend you submit your request at the following URL: https://ace-accounts.cbp.gov/s/importer-form,” followed by a few other resources.

One business day later, it followed up: “Thank you for contacting ACE support. There is currently a back log of emails. If you still need assistance, please ONLY CALL ACE @ 866-530-4172 opt 3. We apologize for the delay.”

Some of Anderson’s customers were able to get immediate help, but he said those were the ones who did it right before the Supreme Court ruling, or immediately after.

Gould said ACE has always been a bit slower, but he hasn’t experienced it being much worse than it usually is. For example, when he would run a report and download data for a client, he would usually have to wait 30 seconds to a minute for the data. In the past few weeks, he’s been waiting between two and five minutes, he said.

“The difference between a one-minute wait and a two-minute wait doesn't seem like a lot of a difference,” he said.

Gould said that while this has been occurring over the past month, there have been times in the past where the wait time has gone up and down for other reasons, like a new update. He also said his clients overall haven’t had much trouble creating new ACE accounts, so long as they follow the right procedure.

“The last one that a client of mine set up, I think they got their login information the next day,” he said.

Gould said when the actual refunds start, he expects it to be worse.

“I expect it to get worse, but it's not getting as much worse as I would have expected,” he said.