I want to repeat my experience with trying to ship an item from Thailand to USA FOR REPAIR and returned to me.

I recount this story to illustrate how many light years Thailand will have to travel to be compatible with Western business practices. Thailand is so isolated by its language, its cultural oddities, and its general lax employee behavior.

Example.........

I want to ship an item to USA. Item is now in Thailand, having been imported correctly with massive duty paid on it. I want to send the item to USA for REPAIR and return to me in Thailand WITHOUT paying full duty again. So I telephoned shipping companies.

Schenker...good English, said no private customers, just businesses.

FedEx.......very weak English, tiny voice, operator leaves phone to ask about my "customs return" question, as if first ever heard about doing this. Much on phone waiting and repeating my need. Thai females can not speak up and just can not talk loudly.

UPS...... machine answered phone, switched to a line that rang for five minutes, tried twice, gave up.

DHL.... rang for five minutes, tried thrice, gave up.

Another private shipping company.... English too weak to take my phone number.

Thailand Customs information special dept ... three numbers given on their web site, two never answered, one rang a private home, gave up.

Back to FedEx....medium weak English, sent six pages of forms in Thai to fill out and scan and send back to FedEx special customs office. Sent separate five pages of forms to be supplied by the repair company in USA, English. Anticipated delay one week. I will have to pay about $35 in fees to get this "export/import for repair" to go out and about $140usd in fees to get item back in, exempt from full customs duty.

This simple activity required seven calls to FedEx and three emails from FedEx, several repeated explanations of what I wanted due to getting different people at FedEx on phone, and overall, to date, one full day and one half days doing nothing but this.

What I learned again is that even foreign companies in Thailand can not provide near to international standards in ordinary service. Thailand has tiny chance of growing out of its current economic system (cheap labor, no innovation) and even more tiny chance of being taken over by another nation. It is very close to hopeless.

Well since they cant even make french fries properly at Mcdonalds im not that surprised you have encountered problems with international shipping

But Sizzlers can make decent fry's!

I won't buy any products here at all, i bring them in from Europe myself. Made in Germany or Japan only, never had any problems with those.

Also made in USA is of poor quality and their service is even worse. Even for products with lifetime or 10 years warranty.

Before you send it out....make photos about everything, the part, they type shield with the product number, if something is visible broken, this one. Photo of the documents together with the product, etc etc.

You don't know what will happen when it comes back so you should be prepared.

Reason #42C, why it is indeed more expensive to live in Thailand.