Introduction

I am Estonian guy currently living in Berlin. I have registered a company in Estonia. In January I had placed order for 3 Cubietrucks from China to be shipped to Berlin and I had the invoice addressed to my company back in Estonia.

I knew I had to deal with customs as I had some experience working with Estonian DHL who quickly and rather painlessly got it done for another package from Aliexpress I ordered two-three months earlier.

Playing ping-pong with DHL

On the 1st of February I received an obscure SMS from an UK telephone number telling the tracking number of some package and a generic e-mail address to contact regarding customs:

Guten Tag, der Zoll fordert einen Zahlungsnachweis für Ihre Sendung
AWB 1118xxxxxx. Bitte sender Sie uns diesen an lejhubcustoms@dhl.com oder
rufen Sie uns an unter 0341/44994466. Vielen Dank. Ihr DHL Express Team

I also had a converation with a guy who called me from a German number. I asked whether it is about package from China, but he refused to share the details. How the hell am I supposed to know what you're talking about if I have ordered packages from several companies across the globe?

He instructed me to send the tracking number, EORI number and company contacts to the generic e-mail. After that I received the generic response and I kept receiving those for each e-mail I sent them. Until now I have 8 of those in my mailbox:

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,
vielen Dank für Ihre E-Mail. Ihre Anfrage wird unverzüglich bearbeitet.


Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you for your e-mail. Your request will be processed immediately.

Freundliche Grüße / Kind Regards

Ihr Team der DHL Express Import- und Exportabfertigung

DHL Hub Leipzig GmbH
Hermann-Köhl-Str. 1
04435 Schkeuditz
Deutschland

Phone               +49 341 4499-4466
Fax                   +49 341 4499-4467

lejhubcustoms@dhl.com

Sendungsverfolgung unter www.dhl.de

The first response from Madeleine instructed me to send the tracking number altough I already had sent the tracking number:

Dear customer,

please send us the tracking number.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Kind Regards

Madeleine

The next response by Kai who addressed me as Miss Võsandi said following:

Dear Ms Võsandi

Thank you for your email.
To customs clear your shipment please also send us your VAT no. via email.
Thank you!


Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Kind Regards


Kai

I replied that my company does not have VAT number since it is not required for small companies with income lower than certain threshold. That is what I also said over the phone.

Then there were no e-mails for two-three days, I sent e-mail to the generic address asking about the status of the package. Gloria responded with:

Dear Customer,

thank you for your Email. I checked your shipment.
For customs clearance we need a Importer.
You informed us that the importer will be your company in Estonia.
To get a shipment cleared for a company which is not in Germany a DDP confirmation from the shipper is needed.

This means the shipper needs to confirm that they will pay the importcharges.
This is the only way to handle this shipment and get it cleared by customs and delivered.

We contacted the shipper about this and wait for the response now.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen /Kind Regards

Gloria

I am not a of course bookkeeper and I don't know the details about importing stuff to EU. I would expect the company that is in this particular business field to have professional knowledge about taxation and importing. In December I dealt with Estonian DHL about another package from China. I paid 20% VAT of the product value for entering the EU tax zone, 14EUR for customs taxes and 23EUR for the paperwork.

According to this e-mail the DHL is doing business with Chinese companies for the first time. Chinese have never cared about the EU taxes unless it is clearly stated otherwise, eg. Customs services and international tracking provided in eBay.

I sent them several e-mails saying that most probably I have to pay the import fees. They insisted I have to wait for the confirmation from shipper.

Then at some point, out of the blue they tell me that I can pay in cash to the delivery guy for the customs. In the beginning when I got the call from the guy I explicitly asked can I pay for all the fees in cash to the delivery guy, they said that for all payments they will send an invoice, thus what the hell?

Dear customer,

if we use a non-german EORI number for import we need a confirmation from
shipper to pay duties and taxes. If you want you also can confirm a delivery by cash.

Kind regards

Sylvio

Then some letters later they finally tell me to send the invoice from the shipper so they could declare the goods.

Dear Mr. Vosandi,

i cant tell u an ammount of duties and taxes because we need a proof of
payment for the duty department, if we have it we can tell u the ammount.
We cant deliver without this proof of payment, please send us some invoice
or order confirmation to clear the shipment for delivery.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Kind Regards

Kai

Next thing happening is that the delivery guy calls that he's about to deliver the package. I was about to sign the delivery and I ask him what about the import declaration and he just shrugs his shoulders saying that he doesn't know. Eventually I did get no customs declaration and I haven't heard from DHL since then.

I can't believe I am the only company importing goods to European Union. Why do I have do deal with this crap via e-mail? A generic e-mail?! Why there is no web environment for customs declaration and uploading the related documents? Up to now I have sent and received in total 23 e-mails and talked to 5-6 persons related to this package which shows utter incompetence of the German DHL.

Some customer feedback

Now we finally come to the customer feedback, the most important aspect of glorious capitalism.

Dear DHL, please fire some of those incompetent employees and spend this money to develop a proper web interface for declaring customs. Bind that system with the tracking number system so the customer or the shipper could already upload all the required documents before the package arrives in the destination. This way you can get rid of the warehousing and increase your throughput and thus efficiency.

Once you have web based forms make it crystal clear what kind of information needs to be entered. Make it possible to create an account so I will never-ever have to enter that data again. Get rid of the retarded generic e-mail approach as it is slow, error-prone and inefficient.