Fedex & Customs

[sid786]

Hi Guys,

first of all great little forum who i wish should have signed up earlier...

Nevertheless i am here now...

I run a small business from Home but big enough to employee couple of guys and be VAT Registered...

I import non-counterfeit OEM electronics from china and sell them on ebay for markup...

None of goods are copied or fakes....I have been running this business for about a year now without any issues with customs or courier.

Recently i placed order with manufacturer...Shipment allegedly got stop by customs asking for good value declaration.

I sent them commercial invoice for goods value..;.

In the meantime on fedex tracking information consignment showed up "twice" as being cleared by customs.

But fedex keep telling me its still held with customs and an investigation is ongoing....

My problem is that i have orders to fullfill and fedex kept promising me it will clear tomorrow tomorrow and tomorrow never came...

Now its been 15 days shipment being in transit and 7 working days its been at depot of FEDEX "awaiting clearance"

Thing that absolutely makes me loose faith with fedex is that i called up customs helpline and asked them to look into it or anything they can do to speed up the process....they asked for Import entry reference which i provided them given to me by "FEDEX"

and guess what customs response was? it was that there is no shipment with that reference number?

Does it seem like Fedex has cocked up? or potentially have lost the shipment?

it was shipment of 20 Large Boxes...so not a small shipment...

Any help would be much appreciated as with passing time i am loosing money and i am not getting anywhere with FEDEX Customer service who just read generic response from the tracker

 

[roydmoorian]

Don't get too hung up on what he tracking from FedEx says, some of it seems to be generated by default to make the customer think he or she is actually "in the loop".

Maybe the airwaybill has come unstuck and a new one generated.

Did the shipper also write the aiwaybill number or a delivery address on the cartons ? It can help.

In my experience these situations usually resolve themselves.

Keep pestering their customer services and you will eventually get an answer.

 

[sid786]

Don't get too hung up on what he tracking from FedEx says, some of it seems to be generated by default to make the customer think he or she is actually "in the loop".

Maybe the airwaybill has come unstuck and a new one generated.

Did the shipper also write the aiwaybill number or a delivery address on the cartons ? It can help.

In my experience these situations usually resolve themselves.

Keep pestering their customer services and you will eventually get an answer.

Yes buddy my supplier has been very good with all shipment documents for over a year now..... Thing that is beyond my understanding is, they cannot give an ETA on it?

They kept promising me tomorrow tomorrow...and funny thing is that they say shipment "cleared with customs" twice but went back into clearance?

I'm fuming...they opened a manager file on the shipment which escalates it to manager just for him to "repeat" exact same thing customer service tells me..

So basically hold tight and pray that it gets cleared somehow somewhere

 

[zooron_sam]

Yep also had glitches with FedEx (UPS too) website tracking showing all sorts of weird stuff when there is a problem with the shipment, the information you get over the phone will be the best.

 

[musicfever]

Well, what the Feded webisite said? I had both DHL and Fedex account, and Fedex always for not urgent parcels. I used Fedex once before coming with big carton box and Fedex charged extra 10 pounds for handing big box while DHL no. So always by DHL with big box.

Dhl, once parcel was held by British custom (I was living in UK and parcels come from China regularly). Sorry can't remeber what the details on DHL website , gave a call to DHL and was told custom held the parcel and I need to offer import papers which I dont have and didn't offer (I bought items from differet suppliers like 5 pieces each so can't offer papers from suppliers). Like about 25 days later, I got my parcel and the box was opened and taped again by someone. During the time, DHL always knew where my parcel was.

From your experience with Fedex, I think Fedex lost your parcel and lied. Maybe you better contact your supplier about the Fedex ACCOUNT your supplier used to see if Fedex takes the amount off from that Fedex account and offer your proof to Fedex in UK.

Hope it helps.