You received a CBP Form 28, Request for Information

What 19 CFR 151.11 actually says, in full

This regulation is short enough to read in one breath, which is why it is worth reading rather than paraphrasing. In full: if an authorized CBP official requires samples or additional examination packages of merchandise which has been released from CBP custody, an authorized CBP official will send the importer a written request, on Customs Form 28, or its electronic equivalent, Request for Information, or other appropriate form, to submit the necessary samples or packages. If the request is not promptly complied with, an authorized CBP official may make a demand under the bond for the return of the necessary merchandise to CBP custody in accordance with 19 CFR 141.113.

That is the whole thing. There is no 30. There is no 60. The only standard the regulation sets is promptly, and the only consequence it names is a bond demand for the return of your merchandise.

The authority that compels a reply is cited on the form itself: 19 USC 1509. So this is not a courtesy request you can weigh against your week. It is just not a countdown either.

Where the 30 days comes from

It comes from CBP Form 28 (08/24), page 3, instruction 5. The wording is the opposite of a deadline. It tells you that if a reply cannot be made within 30 days from the date of the request, you should contact the CBP officer whose name appears on the front of the form.

Read plainly, that is a service window with a safety valve, not a statutory clock. It tells you what CBP would like, and it tells you what to do when you cannot meet it. The industry then turned it into a hard 30-day deadline, and the result is importers who spend 29 days relaxed and then panic, which is exactly backwards. The risk is not the calendar. The risk is silence.

What actually happens if you do not comply promptly

Not a late fee. A demand under your bond for the return of the merchandise to CBP custody, under 19 CFR 141.113. If your goods have already been sold, installed, consumed or shipped onward, you are being asked to produce something you no longer have, and that is a far more expensive problem than the paperwork ever was.

That is the sentence to keep in mind while you decide how urgently to treat this. The cost of a slow Form 28 is not measured in the form. It is measured in redelivery.

There is also a quieter cost. A Form 28 is usually CBP checking classification, value, origin or a program claim on entries that are still open. What you write back frames what CBP does next, which may be a Form 29 proposing a change to the duties on that entry. A thin answer now often buys a bigger conversation later.

• Answer the question that was asked, not the question you wish had been asked.
• Send documents that support the claim on the entry: the commercial invoice, the purchase order, the payment record, mill certificates or origin evidence if origin is the issue.
• If the classification is the subject, explain how the goods work and what they are made of, because that is what decides the heading.
• If you cannot assemble it in time, call the officer named on the front of the form and say so before the date passes, not after.
• Keep a copy of everything you sent and the date you sent it. If a Form 29 follows, that file is your starting position.

So how fast should you move

Start this week. Not because a rule says 30 days, but because the regulation says promptly, because the consequence named in it is a demand for your goods back, and because the answer you send shapes whether CBP proposes a duty change at all.

And if you are past 30 days already, you are not out of options and you have not lost anything automatically. Contact the officer, send what you have, and say when the rest is coming. Promptness after a delay still reads better than silence.

What we cannot tell you from a web page

Whether your Form 28 is routine or pointed depends entirely on what it asks. A request for a sample of one style is not the same animal as a request for the full value build-up on a year of entries from one supplier, and the second one deserves a very different answer.

That is decided by the text of your form, the entry it names, the officer and port it came from, and what your entry actually declared. Those are documents, not generalities, and reading them together takes about ten minutes.