EU, DHL, Mandarake

Hello.

What are your experiences with DHL services here in EU? How did it go with paying duties? I have noticed that Mandarake offers shipping also via DHL. I had experience only with EMS and local postal services. 

 

TY

I'm from Italy, everything I've heard about DHL is bad news so I only use Registered SAL, SAL PARCEL and EMS from Mandarake (where I buy almost everything anime related).

 

DHL add its cost to all the duties, anticipating for you the tax and then reclaiming them from you with interests for the trouble. Or at least these are the rumors, I've never used DHL.

im from spain, and here DHL its terryble they charge you 80€ for the customs tramits that you can made your self by free 😕, i always choose SAL or EMS.

Save and fast transport, but the one shipment I got that way was handled through customs "automatically" and therefore you end up paying their fee( €30 here in Germany) on top of duty and taxes.

So, if you ship higher priced items where the additional cost is OK for you and you prefer the direct to your door shipment over picking up your parcel at a customs office located elsewhere then I consider it a good option.

Obviously, if you ship low value items where the added cost is a large contributor and prefer to declare your shipment at your customs office anyway then you should avoid that option.

In the end it is a trade-off between convenience/time and cost.

Edited May 2, 2019 by nocturne

I had two experiences with DHL, one year or so apart.

The first one was a shipment from Volks : it arrived really quickly, on the day following my order. DHL called me about half an hour before the actual delivery, prompting me to pay for their service / handling fees (about 20€ in France, if I remember well?) online. They then delivered the parcel to my door without any problem.

The second one, however, didn't really go as well. The shipment was from Amazon Japan, and the custom fees had been paid in advance. I wasn't present when DHL tried to deliver the parcel; they left without leaving any notice in the mailbox, but their passage was reflected on the online tracking. However, there was nothing regarding the parcel's whereabouts -the tracking page said, for the better part of a week, that this information would be "available on the following day", but was never updated. I ended up finding out that the parcel had been dropped in a random shop, unrelated to DHL, and had to find a way to go there myself in order to reclaim it (;・∀・)

I had a training katana replika ordered from German website. It was delivered via DHL, it did not end up in customs - suprisingly. But that was a long time ago (about 7 years to the past). Do not know how they managed the duties. (Maybe they used some kind of magic)

 

Quote

I ended up finding out that the parcel had been dropped in a random shop, unrelated to DHL, and had to find a way to go there myself in order to reclaim it (;・∀・)

Ok, good to know. Kind of pretty wild and unresponsible from their employee.

 

Note that if you are inside the EU as implied in your initial question and user name, then ordering from another place inside the EU such as "German website" will neither involve customs as we're one big common trade area nor the related DHL fees for handling them.

As far as delivery quality goes, I have come to the conclusion that it mainly depends on your local people working for the respective companies ... if they're good, service is as well, if they are borderline criminals you may even face attempts at "letting you parcel vanish/stealing"( been there, had that).

Another conclusion I came to is that getting an item delivered that you have to pay for at your doorstep, such as an item handled through customs by DHL( or some other transport company) increases the likelihood of it being delivered as the company has an interest doing so.

Still, letting the item go to customs and then picking it up there yourself has been very reliable for me as well ... so again, mostly time spend vs. money spend here.

Kind regards.

56 minutes ago, nocturne said:

Note that if you are inside the EU as implied in your initial question and user name, then ordering from another place inside the EU such as "German website" will neither involve customs as we're one big common trade area nor the related DHL fees for handling them.

 

Well, the training replica was not made in EU. Perhaps duties were included in price.

54 minutes ago, AmaFromEU said:

Well, the training replica was not made in EU. Perhaps duties were included in price.

Hmm.

Actually, that does not matter, once an item is inside the EU its import has been cared for and the consumer does not have to deal with customs.

However, if that website was just a store front mechanism for ordering that item from outside the EU then if shipped directly to you customs would be involved.

Note that I am just trying to explain as best I can how things are supposed to happen ... doesn't mean reality always follows those ways.

Kind regards.