Apparently it's really difficult to ship a few boxes...

<p>Placed and order for some items from an overseas supplier. Supplier chose to ship via UPS instead of my requested shipping account with another company.</p> <p> </p> <p>Anyway, decided to go ahead and paid 634USD to ship the items. 3 x boxes in total. Order placed and paid for on 29 March 2017. It should take what maybe 4-10 days at most to get my order right? </p> <p> </p> <p>1.) UPS gave me the wrong tracking details, due to being recycled I assume. The number they gave linked to a shipment in Germany. Mine was coming from the Netherlands to South Africa.</p> <p> </p> <p>2.) We could not find the package for several weeks. After numerous follow ups with suppliers, UPS etc (UPS ZA offered no help with this at all), we eventually found the package. Turns out it was shipped, then rejected, then shipped back to the supplier. No notifications via telephone or email from UPS. Sujpplier was useless to in that they never informed me what was going on. </p> <p> </p> <p>That said, other courier companies I have used normally call or email and ask for documents or what not if there is a problem. So tracking details would have been irrelevant even if wrong.</p> <p> </p> <p>3.) So up to this point we are on 29 May 2017. Supplier said they reshipped my items. Now have correct tracking details. Turns out this shippment was sitting in Cape Town for who knows how long. Again, no contact, no call, no email from UPS. I followed up with UPS several times via telephone. No one could tell me what what happening with my package.</p> <p> </p> <p>4.) Someone forwarded my query to a whole bunch of people. No one responds. So I have to follow up on my follow up. Finally, I get a response saying there is some problem with the invoice. Where UPS seem to think I am lowering the amount to save tax because there are "free" items. For a grand total saving of +-R190 on tax. Yeah on a R55,000 order. Right, I'm trying to save R190 in tax.</p> <p> </p> <p>5.) I supp**** them with the details of payment and pro forma invoice so that they could see the quoted amount and payment matched. Thus no erronious tax savings taking place.</p> <p> </p> <p>6.) It's now 3 June 2017, so I compain to everyone linked in the email and tell them of the bad service I have had so far. No reply. </p> <p> </p> <p>7.) 6 June 2017, the supplier asks them for the commercial invoice. They send the pro forma invoice. Who would have throught. A shipping company, dealing with imports and exports all the time, does not know the difference between a commercial and pro froma invoice?</p> <p> </p> <p>8.) Ended up cancelling my order with the supplier as this was going nowhere. Already lost tens of thousands in sales, where customers waiting gave up and bought products from competitors. Still haven't got my money back from the supplier so all in all this is *****ing my cash flow.</p> <p> </p> <p>I'm paying for this "service", but there is no service to be found. I'm not a huge importer, but I do get a couple of shipments a month and have been doing so for 6+ years. So I have other experiences to compare it to and have some idea of how the whole process works. </p> <p> </p> <p>My advice is to stay away from this company if at all possible. For shipments there are an array of other, much better couriers to choose from. I will try my best to never use UPS again. They cost me a lot of money and their service was *******. </p> <p> </p> <p>Even if there was a problem, it happens from time to time, and they helped to resolve it in some way it would be okay. I could forgive them, but they are really not interested. </p>