Complaints

• Initial Complaint

  04/04/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Delivery Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  We bought a Priority shipping service from them on Sunday to ship my duaghters old passport to ******* without which she can travel. She was stranded in *******. So we shipped her passport in a priority mail to ******* in the hotel she was staying. They said customs may be a variant, othrwise she will get the package by Wenesday morning. We did not receive the package wednesday, so we called both *** Koln Germany and US ***, and German Customs. German Customs did not receive the package yet as no documents accompanied. *** status said "Reached out to receiver for documents". we had no clue what documents or we received no notification or email. We called customs and they explained they did not receive any package and they need a Customs declaration form, Proof of payment, and Power of attorney documents. None of this was submitted by *** Germany or *** US. My daughter did not have a phone or cant speak german. Theur ************* phone only announces in German. She had to ask kind hearted people to translate it and borroed their phones. At the hotle lobby she borrowed their phone for 14 hours and stayed on call on hold to get through to someone on phone for 14 hours for 2 starught days. We prepared these forms ourselves and emailed german office. All along US office just asked us to deal with their german office oursevles. How are we suppose dot speak german or reach out and get throuhg. ************* put us on hold and left for home. We stayed on phone for hours unable to talk to anyone. My duaghters medicaiton was running out by now. she was progressively getting sick. My husband back in Us was running to *** stores asking for help. everyone punted us back to *************. I am frantically emailing everyone for help. Now my daughter is stranded helpless in ******* with no hopes of package and sick and running out of money, spending in Euros wihtout spare clothes. *** german office is not mocing our files along, and 5th day now, customs has not seen our forms

  Business response

  04/26/2024

  ***************************** came in and shipped this package on Monday April 1st.  We spent a long time with him to go over everything to make sure he understood the shipping process, While we are with the customer they have to read and sign the electronic documentation for customs, this is printed and put on the package while the customer is there.  We are not able to send a package without the correct documents being done.  The customer wanted their package to get there quickly, the associate gave them the date for estimated delivery (April 3) but was very clear this was pending customs and was not a guaranteed date for delivery.  It is standard protocol through any shipping company that international packages are never guaranteed due to the nature of clearing customs. When the shipment was held up in customs, they contacted us.  We emailed and called to try and help in every way we could.  You can see the attached emails started very early on the date it was estimated for delivery, this was after the customer came in as soon as we opened.    I am attaching some of the correspondence with the customer and with ******* Specialist we were in contact with.  We are a Franchised retail location, we have contacts that we worked with to try and help move this package along.  However, Customs was asking our customer for the power of attorney for the package.  This was included on the original shipment and we provided them with the power of attorney and commercial invoice through email to ****************.  We contacted our international representative to confirm that they had received the documents, they did confirm it was received.  Once customs receives the documents it can take an additional ***** hours to process.  Our international contact is the only way we can communicate with German customs and UPS.  We were given the phone numbers and emails for the recipient to contact them directly in ********  The customer was in contact with us throughout and did tell us that customs in ******* was being hard to deal with. We did absolutely everything that was requested as quickly as possible.    

   

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