Customs Charges On Courier And Good Dhl Customer Services

[virtualtraveller]

It might be helpful if I share a recent headache in getting some excess baggage couriered to Thailand, delayed by unreasonable customs charges, take note of how not to do things.

6 weeks ago I had some excess baggage couriered home from Heathrow to avoid expensive overweight charges from Eva Air (only 23kgs no leeway) but it nearly ended up costing me more, since customs duty amounted to 10,000 baht which is 50% of the value of the contents and more than the overweight airline charges.

This is because all couriered goods are cleared according to express charges of 30%, nothing the company can do about it, other than appeal which take 30 days. I was shocked when DHL informed me, natually I complained and they went to the trouble of appealing for me. The outcome was fortunately good, and they succeeded in reducing the cost and even waivered storage charges because of the trouble. This was surprisingly good customer services and more than expected, so DHL gets a thumbs up from me. Because I was so annoyed at this unfair situation they absorded part of their costs, well done to them.

But, it's no secret that corruption questionnaires among businessmen frequently cite Customs as the worst of the lot, their charges are often abitrary, vary from one landing port to the next and seem to often be blatantly unfair and excessive. In my case the waybill even said goods were made in Thailand, so that duty should not apply. When you send things over there are two rules of thumb a) Undervalue the goods (I hate being dishonest to get a fair deal) and make sure two magic words appear on the description; 'used' and 'personal effects'. The baggage company at Heathrow certainly won't advise on this.

As per Customs website, you can appeal, taking up-to 30 days, though I was not involved in the process so not sure what you can do to convince them it's wrongly chrged. Also note, duty is paid not only on the value, but the shipping costs, taxes and services, which has no justification but hey TIT.

In the end if they were going to charge me 10,000 baht I would have preferred to tell them to keep the bag, since it's better value to replace the contents new, and when you read the news at present that they are implicated apparently in a scam to import luxury vehicles cheating the state out of 1.6 million baht it really is hard to accept.