Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Germany

I have posted on German Customs twice on The Beret Project, believing it is this Government Dept. that regularly delays parcels for long periods of time; the 1st time I spoke of "a couple of weeks delay", the 2nd post it was already 4-6 weeks and these days some German customers have to wait for 11 weeks for the delivery of their beret!
Needless to say, a very frustrating situation for both customer and I (I have a hard time convincing customers that really, the German system is not as efficient as it is seen to be). 
Contacting German Customs again yesterday, after a customer threatened with legal action against me, I received a very informative reply within hours (great work, Zoll On-Line!). 
It's not German Customs (Zoll), but Deutsche Post who are to blame! 
Customs deals with the clearing within 2 days, but for clearance "German Post has to present the goods to customs and make a customs declaration. Due to the high amount of consignments, which are daily imported German Post is unfortunately sometimes not able to present the goods to customs immediately". Well, the choice of the word "immediately" is a bit cynical in the light of 11 weeks delay, but at least, I'm getting further in my quest to solve this issue (I am awaiting a reply from the German embassy in Wellington - I'll keep you updated).
Anyone interested in reading the findings, please drop me a line and I'll forward Zoll's reply to you. 
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousMarch 5, 2013 at 11:22 AM

    Well it seems that there is no other option Daan... you have made it pretty clear about the problems we have over here, you will have to DHL/UPS them, of course this will be more expensive for the customer, but for what its worth its a beret,in an envelope not a bag of lead! and TBH I would rather have had the Boina before christmas than the middle of febuary, when as it seems now Deutsche Post got round to putting it to customs :-s

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  2. Angelo's PapaSeptember 2, 2017 at 8:32 AM

    I have stopped purchasing anything from German because of the lengthy (understatement) delays in either German customs or Post. All my parcels coming from Germany were sent DHL and they still took forever. The other frustrating thing is that neither of these 3 parties update the online tracking so it's impossible to find the parcel. Several times I had given up and then months later, the package suddenly surfaced here in NZ. I understand and completely sympathise with you about this.

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