Shocking customer service

A Chinese supplier of mine sent a small parcel to me via TNT couriers. The supplier generated an invoice for customs purposes and he under declared the value. This is a very common practice out of China and couriers as well as customs knows this. It has nothing to do with me as the importer/customer. When the goods arrived TNT submitted to customs without contacting me first as is required for clearing instructions – this was their first mistake.

They later contacted me and asked for the commercial invoice for this parcel as well as my proof of payment to the supplier. Stating it was stopped by customs for inspection – this was a lie. Saying it would take 5 – 7 days to resolve. I duly sent this, explaining in great detail that the proof of payment was for 3 separate invoices to the same supplier, the invoice in question was included in this payment.

TNT then submitted my proof of payment to SARS and claimed my one small parcel was the total value of the proof of payment, despite my very clear instruction otherwise. This amounted to thousands of US Dollars. When in fact the value was US$240.00

This all could have been avoided had TNT followed correct procedure to start with, and we could of submitted to Customs on the correct value to begin with.

This whole backward and forward took 3 weeks to resolve, and I now still have no goods to speak of.

I have had to order again from China. Something that should of taken max 5 days took them 3 weeks to conclude, with no positive result for me.

Through all of this I copied the department manager on my emails and not once did he even bother to email me back.

Overall service was just shocking beyond words.