do not use seven seas

Seven seas worldwide shipping….where do I even start? This negative review and manic ranting could be never-ending but I think its probably best to be short and snappy so nobody else makes the same mistake as me. Don’t do it. Don’t use this company. Not reliable. Not stress free. Yes hidden costs.

For context, let’s begin with my first shipment (by boat) from Shanghai to Glasgow (UK). This venture took 121 days for two suitcases. It took 12 days to move between Kent and Glasgow. But this wasn’t really a problem for me, it was my autumn/winter clothing (this happened in August/September) so I was patient, it would eventually arrive, I’ll give Seven Seas a call and just check up on it to be sure. The call centre staff are most probably the most unhelpful people I’ve ever encountered in the service industry. They had no additional information that I couldn’t see for myself on the website tracker, whether this is a management flaw (I suspect it most likely is) or the people just didn’t care (this could also be partly true) nobody was able to tell me anything further than “yes it does appear to be taking longer than usual” …why?...”call back again in a couple of days and we’ll see what the situation is” they were desperate to get me off the line, one can only imagine they are inundated with frustrated customers like myself. Calling back in a couple of days simply resulted in a different person telling me to call back in a couple of days and this cycle repeated itself for a good few weeks… Hey ho it eventually made it to the UK to my parents house and I used DHL to swiftly transport it onwards to Poland which they managed in 4 days. Well done DHL!

Now, my second shipment, this is the big one that nearly drove me to a nervous breakdown. My every-day and work clothes that went on an AIR shipment (this means they flew in an airplane although I now reckon they packed it on the back of a tortoise) took 74 days to transport from China to Poland. 74 days. 74. Soon the cycle of calls began “oh dear longer than usual… don’t know why… give it a couple of days… call back”. This went on for weeks, 6 at least. Then, I get an email from Polish customs “why is this name on your shipment?”. By this point, my luggage had been at customs for a few weeks and seven seas had told me there was no problem and I just had to wait it out, it was out of their hands and all the fault of customs going slowly. I then received a call…and it hit the fan…the name on my shipment was not my name. So I tell customs that I don’t know that name or why it’s on my luggage and proceed to call Seven Seas where I immediately lose my patience (to put it politely). This was the reason for the delay, why had this not been picked up on, why had this happened in the first place. Why oh why. Well this outburst finally got the ball rolling. Something clicked with Seven Seas that I was not a happy customer. They finally pulled their finger out and lo and behold they were actually able to do something about the delay (why had this not been possible earlier when I was being polite and courteous? Who knows!)

Fast forward another 3 weeks, a further customs payment, yes there were 2 payments needed for some reason to TNT and FedEx (they were now involved and I don’t quite know why, no one seems to talk to each other and they certainly did not talk to me).

I am seriously out of pocket from the cost to begin with, additional customs costs, additional cost for masks being removed (apparently China won’t allow that in a midst of a pandemic) and then having to buy new clothes to keep me going until my luggage arrived.

I have no idea how they have a high rating on TrustPilot (more like UNtrust pilot, am I right?! I guess ‘bots’ are all the rage these days and get the ratings higher). I am so glad that this nightmare has ended, I have my stuff back and I will never use Seven Seas again and I urge everyone else to look elsewhere for their shipping needs.