I'm from Germany and the situation of the customs fees is the following:
For commercial items up to a value of 22€ or a personal package marked as gift, up to 45€ no fees have to be paid.
If you have a low value commercial item from 23-150€ you have to pay the so called import sales tax. The value of the whole package is important, so if the content + the shipping is over 22€, this kind of tax has to be paid. The fees depend on the kind of the content.
If you have a private package with a value over 45€ or a commercial item over 22€ then you have to pay both import sales tax and customs fees, usually 17.5% of the content value.
Don't worry it seems you did everything right and the customer just didn't expect the fees. Usually not every item will be checked but it is known that every insured packaged sent i.e. as priority will be checked for sure. In case you didn't declare it as gift then it is sure why the customs fees appeared.
In case the transport company, aka the german mail system is not able to see the value of the package or can't read the declaration, they're not allowed to give you the package as german receiver to my knowledge.
Sometimes it even happends that everything is perfect but you just have a lazy mail man, who's not able to understand english and therefore many packages have to be caught from the customs offices in person, which is not funny.
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