******ION and INCOMPETENCE from DHL

******ION and INCOMPETENCE from DHL My wife's friend sent her a gift via DHL from France. He paid over R2000 to send the gift. DHL South Africa added another R558.10 for us to pay in South Africa because they insisted that the invoice did not state gift but instead was marked as permanent, and therefore had to be taxed as a commercial import. DHL also sent us a whole lot of documentation asking for a VAT no’s and company registration number! We called DHL customer services over 5 times telling them that it is a parcel for a private person not a commercial shipment but nobody at DHL bothered to drop the extra charges in South Africa or revoke the commercial paperwork. Interestingly about 2 months back this friend also sent my wife a gift and France also marked that package as permanent BUT it was not taxed with extra commercial duties. We finally found an email address on the DHL website which said that the email goes straight to the country manager for customer services, Mr Ralph Nyarenda. We sent an email to this address only to find that it was rep**** to by a customer services assistant and not the country manager Ralph Nyarenda at all. He gets paid to do nothing to help customers in need! In fact all the customer services reps were totally ***********: Nompumelelo Mlaba rep**** to us telling us what the tracking for the parcel said, which of course we already knew and could ascertain for ourselves. Our friend, in France, sent numerous emails to Mpho Malaza from customer services SA explaining the situation and asking for the further fee plus paperwork to be dropped, but all we received was one reply from her stating that in future we must mark the package correctly! But the worst customer services rep was a customer services executive as they call themselves by the name of Ntombi Zwane who was not only *********** but also sarcastic and useless. She was unable to help but said she could offer further assistance on the parcel we had already received 2 months ago for which we did not have to pay extra charges! Ntombi also blamed DHL France directly for not labelling the parcel a gift. DHL France insisted that they marked the parcel correctly because it will stay in SA and not be in transit. Basically - DHL South Africa blamed DHL France and DHL France blamed DHL South Africa - but DHL did not help us the customer by wavering the additional fee and s****ping the company paperwork. How are we supposed to provide a VAT no’s and company registration number when it doesn't exist??? NTOMBI apologized on behalf of DHL for this request and admitted that it was obvious that it was sent to a private person but she refused to drop the extra charges. This is sheer ******ion on behalf of DHL. Their charges are not cheap and to continue to ****** based on a flimsy premise of incorrect paperwork is ********! DHL held us to ransom. If we wanted the gift we had to pay. After paying the R558.10 we received an email from NTOMBI stating that the parcel will be delivered that day without fail. She gave us her word. For what it's worth, the parcel was delivered the next day! DHL South Africa refused to communicate with DHL France on the error and DHL France refused to accept that it was even an error. They insisted that they coded the package correctly and according to DHL protocol. This is the worst courier company out there, with high fees for the worst service possible. In future we will use FedEx or any other courier company but NOT DHL!!! With 1964 negative reviews and based on our experience DHL is a company you cannot trust. The sender opened an investigation ticket into this and we want our R558.10 refunded.