Dame repays tariff‑surcharge, seeks refund

Dame Products cofounder Alexandra Fine said Sunday that her company refunded customers who paid its Trump tariff surcharge and is now trying to recover its own money from U.S. Customs. (finance.yahoo.com) Fine said Dame added the surcharge in 2025 after tariff costs on China-made imports jumped and the company could not quickly reprice goods sold through retailers including Target and Walmart. (finance.yahoo.com) The fee showed up as a separate line item at checkout, usually $5 to $15, and ran from April through the end of May before Dame removed it after a temporary U.S.-China trade deal. (modernretail.co) Fine told Modern Retail the company sold roughly 2,000 surcharge line items and planned to return about $10,000 to customers automatically within 15 business days. (modernretail.co) She said Dame chose to reimburse shoppers before knowing whether the federal government would repay importers, calling it the right move after the Supreme Court struck down many of the tariffs. (modernretail.co) (finance.yahoo.com) The company is now pursuing its own refund through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection portal that opened in April, and Fine said the process has meant calls and paperwork rather than a quick payout. (finance.yahoo.com) Fine said Dame has paid more than $100,000 in tariff bills to U.S. Customs, while the surcharge itself never fully covered the hit from higher import costs. (modernretail.co) She said the tariff shock also forced Dame to redo inventory forecasts, left it out of stock in some weeks, and strained relationships with retail partners that typically require about 90 days to change prices. (finance.yahoo.com) Fine said the surcharge was meant partly as customer education, but it hurt conversion because shoppers reached checkout and saw a higher final price than they expected. (finance.yahoo.com) (modernretail.co) For Dame, the visible surcharge is gone, but the tariff bill is still being settled one refund claim at a time. (finance.yahoo.com)