A Solution to the ambigious "Item is being held while the addressee is notified" USPS Tracking Status

If you get a USPS tracking statement like “Your item could not be delivered due to payment of charges. It is being held while the addressee is notified” and you aren’t sure what is going on, this might help.

USPS statuses can be hard to understand, especially when being sent internationally and the items get passed to other carriers. This is what worked for me, in the UK, specifically.

My USPS tracking showed the following message “Your item could not be delivered on August 20, 2022 at 8:33 am in UNITED KINGDOM due to payment of charges. It is being held while the addressee is notified.” but I didn’t receive a form with my mail, although this time did align with when the postperson visited.

After lots of googling it seems like I should’ve been posted a “grey card” or a fee to pay card for my package. That card contains a reference number to pay the fee online.

In my instance, because I didn’t have that card I was out of luck. Fortunately, pasting the USPS tracking number into Royal Mail’s online tracker worked instead of needing the reference on the card, and it prompted me to pay my fee.

Note that your fee is probably likely to be the flat £12.50 on imports under a certain value (£137) but will include an outrageous £8 handling fee as well.