Out of curiosity, did you chose Fedex economy or Fedex priority?
I haven’t had any problems with FedEx being that ridiculous yet, but I’m also not entirely surprised either… I do know that for UPS, their “priority” shipping (or whatever they call it) generally includes all the brokerage fees (so you only pay tax on top), whilst their “economy” (or whatever they call it again…) option does not include brokerage fees so you have to pay them when it’s delivered, and for smaller orders is usually more expensive than just having paid for Priority anyways.
I’m wondering if FedEx operates in a similar way?
Edit: I found this blog post which deals with brokerage fees to Canada…
http://www.thegatesofdawn.ca/wordpress/ … rage-fees/
“They” say that FedEx Ground will have brokerage fees, but FedEx Int’l Economy and Priority should have those included…
Edit again: Is it perhaps possible that SF wasn’t aware that the brokerage fees would be waived if the shipment was returned? (Did you communicate that to them, or did they just assume that you were trying to push the brokerage fees back to them)