D H elL

[Ariadne]

Abosolute waste of time and zero customer service.

Paid to get some parts for my DuoGen delivered to Las Palmas, they left the UK on the 1st April arrived inLas Palmas on the 2nd and there they stayed!

Alegedly stopped by customs! I contacted on DHL loccaly a number of occasions, and got no response; then last Thursday somebody decided to speak to me and told me the goods would only be released if sent them a copy of my Spanish fiscal No. and Spanish ID. This inspite of the packet being clearly marked with my name the boats name and 'Vessel in Transit'.

I told them I wasn't Spanish so this request was imposible to meet, so they suggested I sent them a copy of my passport - so I did and no packet. I offered to drive down to the clearence house with my passport and ships papers - not possible. I contacted DHL in the UK, I'm still waiting for a response from them!

In the meantime my packet is now waiting to be dispatched to somewhere from Madrid airport!

Now as I understand it when you pay a courier, they normally clear your goods in/out of a country as part of the service, at least they for me on a number of occasions.

As for DHL a complete shambles and an expensive exercise for me (their fees and an extra weeks marina fees - as won't deliver to an anchorage and phone youup to collect it!)

ANybody else had this sort of complete failure from DHL?

 

[Eeyore]

Yep!

http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=269629

Now trying the Sect. 75 route but can't get the credit card company to answer e-mails!

 

[Ariadne]

3 people chasing them including eth specialist shipping Co (who are the A/C holders with DHL), panic has set in - it will be with me tonight/1st thing in the morning.

We'll see.

 

[rivonia]

The same thing happend to us when we were in Spain. We also eventually had to arrange for extra special delivery to the Marina. Have not used them since. Also a package was delivered by DHL to us in Gib and to the boat impressed I was- BUT I had to pay a charge of £12.00 or they would not give me the package!!!!!

Peter

 

[Sybaris]

ANybody else had this sort of complete failure from DHL?

You bet, and not only DHL. All couriers are pretty much the same and the fees they charge to clear customs are extortionate (if they even clear it). I have many examples both from work and while living on-board. It is a cartel.

Oh, and I almost forgot. If you read their small print they give virtually no guarantees as to delivery times and custom clearance.

Per

 

[Ariadne]

5.29€ import tax (OK I knew about that)
20.60€ admin fee!!(FFS I've already paid them to deliver the F'ing packet)
1.03€ tax on all of the above

So an extra 26.92€ just get the thing delivered AFTER paying the courier fee. Add to this the marina fees incured and very soon its cheaper and easier to go back to the UK and collect; DHL can go and swing next time - it's a rip off.

The funny thing is after I complained and demanded my money back, it cleared customs in 20 minutes the second time, and it was delivered to me when they said it would be!

 

[tennisgirl1]

Sending parcels abroad

I don't know about Spain which is clearly strong on red tape, but I recently sent a 25 kilo parcel to Leros in Greece by Parcelforce for about £30. It was picked up from Hertfordshire and arrived in 6 days. I was very pleased with this service which I booked through www.parcel2go.com, having failed utterly with the Parcelforce website!

 

[DownWest]

Friends from Canada left their digital camara with us a few years back. I sent it DHL, they managed to get the import duty back on presentation of the sales ticket. I later got a demand from DHL for the 'customs handling charge' . Huh? I had explained the situation when I sent it, all OK. Told them to take a running jump, several times.
Bit like RyanAir, they need to make it up on the periferals, if not questioned too closely. Except that RA have got it better orginised. Or the car rental co.s that bill you for damage that you cannot prove was not yours after the rental period. Spain a favorit.

 

[maxi77]

5.29€ import tax (OK I knew about that)
20.60€ admin fee!!(FFS I've already paid them to deliver the F'ing packet)
1.03€ tax on all of the above

So an extra 26.92€ just get the thing delivered AFTER paying the courier fee. Add to this the marina fees incured and very soon its cheaper and easier to go back to the UK and collect; DHL can go and swing next time - it's a rip off.

The funny thing is after I complained and demanded my money back, it cleared customs in 20 minutes the second time, and it was delivered to me when they said it would be!

If you read their Ts&Cs you will find it all there. That is not bad in the grand scheme of things, back in the 80s when I had stufff sernt around the world for work clearance into the UK by a commercial shipper or courier started at £50 no matter the value of the goods (not surprising then that I occasionaly carried pcbs in my luggage)

Quite often when goods come into the UK if they are not too valuable no one bothers even if they are worth more than the lower limit for duty. Most other countries have a zero tolerance on duty so everything over the limit is charges and of course the couriers charge for the extra paper work, wouldn't you?

 

[DownWest]

Yes, but if one explains the situation beforhand and much later gets gets a bill? Bit of a disconnect in their system.

 

[maxi77]

Yes, but if one explains the situation beforhand and much later gets gets a bill? Bit of a disconnect in their system.

One of the big problems is it is usually the supplier who contracts the carrier, from his chosen list and on terms they have agreed. It is a cut throat business and I suspect that most carriers have little or no desire to vary charges and conditions for such commercial customers on low margin deals.

Thus you the customer unless you are careful end up at the receiving end and paying through the nose.

In my opinion DHL are not that good, they once told me a package on their 24 hours delivery scheme was not late till 48 hours after the item was shipped.

Some of the better US suppliers will offer a choice of carrier so you can pick the one with the best handling and charges at your end.

 

[Ariadne]

If you read their Ts&Cs you will find it all there. That is not bad in the grand scheme of things, back in the 80s when I had stufff sernt around the world for work clearance into the UK by a commercial shipper or courier started at £50 no matter the value of the goods (not surprising then that I occasionaly carried pcbs in my luggage)

Quite often when goods come into the UK if they are not too valuable no one bothers even if they are worth more than the lower limit for duty. Most other countries have a zero tolerance on duty so everything over the limit is charges and of course the couriers charge for the extra paper work, wouldn't you?

Well after being in business for a number of years, I've found then when you give your customer a price for a job - that is what you can be expected to get paid for completing the job.

I this case I paid a courier to deliver something to me at an agreed price, they then add the extras for administration, which as far as I'm concerned is part of the deal - that is why we use a courier. I'm pretty sure they knew this was going to be added, but they didn't tell me so it's an extra fee they added without my knowledge. If they had said "there will be an admin' fee to release the good from customs" then I wouldn't have a problem as I know about it.

My biggest gripe is not the admin fee, its the fact that my packet sat in customs for 19 days and DHL couldn't be bothered to clear it, and when they eventually spoke to me I was told I needed a Spanish ID and Fiscal No. to get it released.

Their service was worse then ****!

 

[MailASail]

I don't mean to alienate one of my customers, but just to add a couple of thoughts:

Firstly, in many countries, Customs are one of the more powerful "police forces" and that their rules vary from country to country, and usually are not negotiable... (or even sane...)

Additionally, the freight carrier (ie DHL, Fedex, etc) are not the customs agents, they are just normal businesses and need to comply with the various customs rules in effect at the destination country.

The tricky catch 22 is that you don't *need* to employ a "courier" to dispatch your goods to another country, in fact you can do all the customs clearance yourself and simply employ a (cheaper) freight service. However, the "courier" industry exists to try and wrap this rather complex process with a "door to door" service - so yes on the surface you kind of have an expectation that by using a courier, you are employing someone who should take some responsibility for helping you clear the goods through customs!

In practice it all falls down because whilst the courier is *helping* you, they can't simply avoid the various customs rules, they still need to comply with them. This often means shipping to certain destinations requires certain procedures...

To highlight two standard trouble destinations: Turkey and Gran Canaria. Forget right now about the courier service you choose - shipping to either of these destinations says something like "2 days" on the courier quote, but it *WILL* take you an extra 1-10 days in practice to clear the goods through customs. Additionally I always take some time to bind the customer over that *THEY* must get involved to assist with getting the paperwork all cleared as speedily as possible.

Now, the reality of shipping to Gran Canaria is:

- You can ONLY ship to a local tax registered business, and you will NEED to provide their tax details to get the goods shipped

- DHL is the only big name courier which appears to have a shipping office in GC - However, having investigated using them, it appears they (bafflingly) can't themselves clear the goods for you... (So there seems no advantage in DHL there?)

- Therefore the only option is to employ a local clearing agent to clear the goods for you. This will cost you a bunch of money... I have used the tame agent employed by World Cruising Club (ie the ARC), and he is "ok". However, any local tax registered business is possible, so we have also used a friendly business on one occasion and for example, Rol Nautique in Las Palmas harbour can probably act as your agent (perhaps for a lower fee...)

- Even more annoyingly, you MUST assume that the Spanish customs will NOT alert you that they need more paperwork. My standard expectation is to ship the goods, watch for them to stop in Madrid, then phone up to find they need passport details and tax details, give them that then put the phone down. Now the important bit, call them back next day to find that almost certainly they need something else or forgot to write something down, THEY WILL NOT CALL YOU BACK - instead get proactive and call them daily.

If you follow the above then it's reasonable to get goods shipped to GC in 3-7 working days. If you don't then 2-3+ weeks or a return to shipper is normal (roughly only 50% of my parcels have ever got to GC...!!)


For those who aren't yet getting just how tricky this destination is:
- I once tried to ship a parcel in "August". Rang up every customs clearance agent I could speak enough spanish to, to basically find that they all were on holiday in August and couldn't help. Several suggested completely seriously that I simply wait until September to ship my parcel... (I failed to get the parcel delivered at all in that case)


The best way to ship to GC is *seriously*. Book a Sleazyjet flight to some european destination (probably £100 ish), pickup the item and pay any excess to carry it back on the return flight (perhaps same day). Seriously - for any item more expensive than a letter it's faster, less hassle and cheaper... For bonus marks fly first to Teneriffe (v. cheap internal flight), then you can get a BA flight instead (more comfortable and free drinks)

So, quick list of places which are hard to ship to:

- Turkey - expect to pay some Baksheesh, or loose the item...
- Canary Islands, but specifically GC - customs red tape
- Mainland Spain - can be red tape sometimes
- Gibraltar - curiously it's nearly painless, but you normally need to pay some (small) amount of money to get your parcel released. I have seen some people get extremely upset at paying £10 to get their £4,000 parcel released despite effectively managing to pay no VAT by picking it up in Gib... I'm not commenting other than this is just the process there, take it or leave it...
- USA - *Incredible* amount of paperwork for some items, eg for Iridium phones I need to send paperwork with every item proving they meet FCC approval...

(If you ship enough you start to learn this stuff, unfortunately it's often not stuff that the courier company can help with..)



Finally, whilst I realise this has turned into something of a shipping rant... It's tempting to judge individual courier agencies based on a single good/bad experience you have had. The reality is that largely they are all the same (equally bad...). The problem stems from the issue that whilst the parcel can be worth £2K to you, to the shipping company it's probably worth say £12, and to the guy in the white van delivering it, it's usually a fixed fee of say £1-2 per parcel. So with the best will in the world, your delivery is worth very little to the guy at the sharp end, and ultimately it's his work ethic which is going to dictate whether this feels successful or not...


Good luck with sorting your parcel - to anyone else looking to ship to GC - do be forwarned that it's not easy no matter which agent you use. Also, please assume that there is no such thing as "completely tax free", nearly every destination has some kind of clearance fees, be happy if they are lower than paying tax in your home country...

Sincerely good luck!

 

[maxi77]

One of the great problems is that couriers/parcel carriers still behave as if they only dealt with profesionals where as in reality many are amateurs and do not know the way the system works. When you book a pacage through they assume you know how it works and what the extra charges will be. Of course novicxes feel badly treated, quite rightly but as I said it will all be in the Ts&Cs somewhere.

For real fun try shipping something which can only be hand carried, and can't be x-rayed. You make some very interesting new aquiantances.

 

[grumpy_o_g]

DHL unfortunately have a bit of a reputation in the IT industry as well and my experience tends to back this up. One important thing to remember is that sending a package via DHL does not mean that DHL will deliver it. They (and I suspect others in fairness) frequently use other couriers, especially if it avoids them having to send a wagon way off route for a single package or something.

The other thing is that some of the largest companies in the world with huge contracts with them often have trouble getting them to follow instructions. It's all very well specifying that they must give 24 hours notice of delivery and only deliver between 5pm and 7pm but that message has to get to the dispatcher and the driver and the driver has to be motivated enough to actually follow those instructions. If he's finished the rest of his round at 4:15pm you can guarantee he'll try to deliver your package early. If they've subb'ed the delivery to another courier this effect is compounded.

If you throw in the murky world of Customs and their attitude is usually to give a couple of goes and say "well, we tried but it's with Customs". The only real way round I've found is to either buy the product locally and let someone else import it (usually more expensive and will simply mean that they take the cost if it doesn't get delivered; you still don't get the part you need) or to pay for a shipping agent or importer's services (which again costs). DHL and other Couriers actually have very good people who handle customs and the like but you have to pay an awful lot more to get their services.

 

[capnsensible]

The Canaries are a notoriously bad place to get stuff delivered. I waited 11 days in Lanzarote once waiting for an overnight delivery from Lewmar.....

 

[Ariadne]

Good post Ed, next time I want sent out I'll e-mail you first for your advice on the best method. Still at least I'm not the only one who's being stung by red-tape.

I was hoping to get 6 solar panels shipped out directly from China in August, anybody got any ideas?

 

[Ariadne]

Cheers Ed, at least we all now know how things work out here.

 

[MailASail]

I was hoping to get 6 solar panels shipped out directly from China in August, anybody got any ideas?

Shipping *from* China is not likely to be too bad, it's the rules on the *to* side which slow things down.

In general there are import duties to be paid in most locations except say Gibraltar, Canaries, Channel Islands (except Jersey), Hong Kong and a few other locations. Those with low or no import duties tend to be the ones with the fiercest customs to get the parcel through. HK and Gib are the two which are comparatively the most simple to receive items tax free. Others will *often* exclude you from import duties if you write the magic "Yacht in Transit" on the box, but even there you may be bound over and have limitations to leave the country placed upon you... I think this works in Australia and much of the Caribbean for example

Finally, if the items are heavy and you are not in a rush, then the more of the shipping you are prepared to do, the cheaper it gets. Sea freight is the cheapest of all, but only for very large items that can take 2 months to ship.

Remember also that stuff gets bashed roughly in order:

- Air
- Land
- Sea

So if a single walled cheap box will *often* make it from China to London ok... However, a double walled decent box will have round corner between London and Switzerland by land freight (but the cost will be cheaper for a heavy parcel). Sea freight will arrive in a metal shipping container with some of the container corners rounded off for example...!


So to get specific. If you have plenty of time and you are shipping lets say 60KG+, then start shopping around with the specialist carriers for a price... Remember to appropriately insure everything also

My father just bought a new "toy" Trimaran (Dragonfly look alike) from the UK and had it put in a container (the floats fold in on those boats) and shipped to Thailand. I forget the rates, but it was extremely affordable...

Good luck

 

[MailASail]

I think I gave the wrong overall tone on couriers. Largely speaking the service they offer is absolutely excellent, especially factoring in the costs charged. Freight charges to around the world have dropped to incredibly low levels (eg I think the cost to ship around a 30KG parcel from the UK to Hong Kong, *overnight* is something like the low £100-150 ish (don't have a rate sheet handy).

OK, my points were:

a) specific destinations may have a bunch of bureaucracy attached. Simply learn these and take appropriate action. Note that I didnt say you *couldn't* ship to GC, I simply said that it would take some effort, and in particular the sender needs cooperation from the receiver to get it there fastest.

b) think a little about what's actually happening to your parcel... You don't drop it into a magic chute and it pops out at the other end. Real human beings are involved, they are working on a shoestring budget, but largely they do care. ie write all the details on the shipping carton and as a receiver be flexible to delivery schedules. Try not to eg: ship something to Spain and write a bunch of very complex *english* instructions on the box to first phone someone, deliver at certain times, etc... Just imagine you worked the UK round, you have to buy your own van, fill your own petrol, and a spanish parcel turns up, the depot offers you £1.50 to deliver it through the traffic to a destination which is going to take you an hour round trip to get in and out and there is some Spanish instructions on the side to phone someone who no doubt speaks no english and negotiate their dictating your deliver schedule for the rest of the day...?!

DHL unfortunately have a bit of a reputation in the IT industry as well and my experience tends to back this up. One important thing to remember is that sending a package via DHL does not mean that DHL will deliver it. They (and I suspect others in fairness) frequently use other couriers, especially if it avoids them having to send a wagon way off route for a single package or something.

DHL have lost a few parcels for me, but so have other couriers.

However, just think about what you said: DHL might not be big enough to employ a van driver on every street in the whole world, every day? Actually, that's quite a big company that can even have a representative *office* in every country, so that gives you a sense of the size of these huge logistics companies.

Only the giants such as Fedex, DHL, UPS, etc even try to have representatives everywhere. However, logically, few of these guys will also own their own fleet of planes and boats (a couple do!), so largely there will be multiple outsourcing of the handling along the way. Your BA flight will probably be carrying parcels and letters, etc as well as humans.

I don't think you should be necessarily scared to use the smaller guys though. They will have negotiated a bunch of relationships with other carriers to dispatch your parcel, and at the end of the day all that matters is it getting there. Does it sound more reliable if there is an employed guy with a DHL van turning up, versus a white van man who will get fired and replaced at a moments notice if he doesn't complete his round?

The other thing is that some of the largest companies in the world with huge contracts with them often have trouble getting them to follow instructions. It's all very well specifying that they must give 24 hours notice of delivery and only deliver between 5pm and 7pm but that message has to get to the dispatcher and the driver and the driver has to be motivated enough to actually follow those instructions. If he's finished the rest of his round at 4:15pm you can guarantee he'll try to deliver your package early. If they've subb'ed the delivery to another courier this effect is compounded.

As I say above - just spend a few minutes thinking about the process that must actually be happening to get your parcel to the far side of the world in such a short space of time, for what is generally a pretty small cost?

The process has to *scale* to delivering millions of small parcels a day. There is little room in any productionised process for customising the process for one off exceptions. Yes it's great they take special instructions, but my advice is that the usually foreign speaking delivery guy who is paid a pittance to handle the final delivery, driving likely a massive route with minimal opportunity to vary it, is just not going to find it easy to meet your requirements?

Just think about your favourite city and imagine delivering 3 parcels, first in the most optimal order for the traffic, and then in the order the customer requests you... Which do you think is easiest to meet? Now make it 100 parcels?

Basically the more flexible the receiver can be, the more likely things are to go smoothly. Also be realistic - I told people expecting a delivery from me last Thursday (just before the long bank holiday...) to consider that they might not arrive until Tuesday... Don't get mad...



Remember there are all kinds of carriers you can use:

1) Cheapest is that you arrange all the paperwork and collection and just give it to the carrier (say at an airport or boatyard)

2) You pay a door to door service to do (nearly) all the above for you - this is what we refer to as a courier.

3) Hand carry. If you want a personal service then employ someone to get on a commercial flight and carry it to the destination. This is not necessarily stupidly expensive, but it means you can get your instructions perfectly handled.

Choose the most appropriate, but mind the limitations of each?

If you throw in the murky world of Customs and their attitude is usually to give a couple of goes and say "well, we tried but it's with Customs". The only real way round I've found is to either buy the product locally and let someone else import it (usually more expensive and will simply mean that they take the cost if it doesn't get delivered; you still don't get the part you need) or to pay for a shipping agent or importer's services (which again costs). DHL and other Couriers actually have very good people who handle customs and the like but you have to pay an awful lot more to get their services.

I'm not sure what you mean here? Courier companies are basically doing all the standardised paperwork for you (I would encourage anyone curious about this to give the Customs and Excise a call and ask about the paperwork to do a personal export... Examine the 14 page form that needs to be filled in...)

The point is that they can only do so much, eg when I send a wireless device to the USA then they need a bunch of paperwork certifying the device meets local wireless standards - it would not be reasonable for Fedex to do this for me? However, I only have to fax the paperwork to them and they get it to the correct person in customs in 30 minutes? That is REALLY helpful!



I think the point is that you normally get what you pay for. Actually, these days you pay very little, and to be fair you get rather a lot! Carriers loose the odd parcel for sure (insure it if it's valuable), but not really so many.

My experience is only a thousand odd parcels, so in reality I don't have enough experience to draw proper conclusions, but a quick data point is that for us Fedex have been extremely cost effective to 90% of our destinations and so far have never lost a parcel. I expect them to loose at least one eventually, but I'm impressed that their loss rate has been zero so far. I have played with all the main carriers and they have pros and conns for specific destinations, but all were roughly the same over a longer period. All have lost parcels for me with the exception of as I say Fedex (so far).

Parcels will get lost with any service though - I recommend ticking the insurance box if you don't have your own third party insurance. The benefits of taking the courier's own insurance are that they pay out very quickly in the case that the parcel drops off the tracking service. T&Cs are usually that it has to properly be lost, not just stuck in customs. However, most will kick in within single numbers of days that the item has been missing

Also note that my experience with parcels stuck on route has been very fair, with either return to us for no additional cost and sometimes no cost at all. As such I have not had a problem with failed deliveries to say GC, if the parcel doesn't get here then after about some time we get it back here (better than it being lost)

Good luck!