ABOUT SHIPMENTS TO US

You may have noticed... The big shipment companies are enjoying a golden time, due to overcharging for "crises" issues. The German post office "shots the bird" as we like to say it here. They have now invented a thing called partial airmail. This means they charge you airmail, but for some parts of the trip they use land mail if that does not make it take it longer. Sounds ok, doesn't it? Because they already did so ever since, there is probably no airplane coming to your house, but a car. Right? But now they charge full airmail, accept the package as such, and then effectively ship it by sea container, saying there is a shipment crisis, and no airplane available. I caught the so called "better" parcel services doing the same thing.

About Customs office.

When sending packages from outside Europe, it has to pass the official government customs office, of course. However by law, they e may not charge "fees" for this. The big couriers, found a way here to make money. They do the customs office service for you. Don't even ask you if they should. They just do it. Then found a way to charge you 35 Euro for nothing. They just drop the packages "as is" at the customs office, and let them do whatever they think is right. That generates a package release and a customs bill. They send you this bill legally, "as is", they don't even read it. Then add a line for what they call pre-finance the payment. If you don't read the mess carefully, it seems indeed they pre-finance 500 Euro for you, and charge you 500+35 Euro. In reality, any registered company has one month payment target with the customs office. So what will they do, they set you a payment target of 3 weeks, and you THINK you pay the 35 Euro for getting 3 weeks credit. But the remaining 1 week allows them nicely to charge you 35 Euro, and they need to pre-finance nothing. If you forget to pay it, they wait on pupose until that week is is over, and they will legally remind you to pay 35 Euro + Reminder fees, etc.

So what will we do with UPS and their brothers, we just subtract this 35 Euro, and pay the invoice BEFORE it is due with the customs office. Since the official customs bill is added, you can read there, when it is due. UPS got angry, and send us a law firm to cash the 35 Euro. Which law firm we told to them to go away and fool somebody else, which is what they did.

All of this is fully unneeded, because some of the good and reasonable companies are still there.

For this reason, we recommend in the first place FEDERAL EXPRESS. We have our own import agent with them, they do not fool us, they do not over charge us, and in case there is a problem (it happens) we can call them, they answer the phone, clarify it and call back.

For lower cost parcels, we recommend plain post office, and make sure you ship it insured.

For the same reason, we do NOT recommend UPS and the EXPRESS SERVICE of DHL.

Here are some links:

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.ups.com
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/dhl-express.de