Comment · Fri, September 15, 2023 · ND Owner
DHL customs to Europe getting worse
Original post in this thread
Baker75006 · 17 points
For your information :
Just got asked to pay 59.50€ for customs to France for a 250€ order.
The 2 last time it was 10€.
Like many I will have to source elswhere for the most part.
What they were answering
Direct reply to the original post — see the thread post above.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
Yes, the whole system seems like a scam. This is what we have dealt with for 10 years. It just customers didn't have to see it, because most countries were not staffed enough to inspect every package, and they had higher de minimis values. So smaller packages didn't have to deal with the BS larger shipments did. However, they saw how much tax revenue they were losing, and decided to change the system to close that loophole. You wouldn't believe how much we spend on shipping. It's fucking insanity! During the pandemic it got really bad. We placed an order for plastic bottles with one estimated shipping cost. However, because of supply chain shortages, it took an extra 3 months to make the order. By the time the order was done, the freight cost shot up to the moon. Normally before the pandemic it would cost us $2,000 for a 40ft shipping container from China. During the pandemic we paid $25,000!!! That's on top of the continuous bond we have to pay for the privilege of being able to have other people clear shipments for us. Also, if your container is one that gets randomly selected by customs for inspection, you will then likely get another $1,000 bill from US customs. It literally DOUBLED the cost of our packaging, all because of shipping charges that happened after we placed the order. If you want to look for the source of product inflation, shit like this is it. Entrenched companies squeezing every last penny out of everyone they can.
https://supplychaindigital.com/logistics/shipping-profits-for-2021-absurd-says-sea-intelligence
https://www.porttechnology.org/news/shipping-industry-predicted-to-rake-in-208-billion-in-profits/
Shipping has been absolutely killing us. You know that recent cyanidin 3-glucoside shipment that FedEx Freight "lost" on the way to us? They wanted us to pay the full multi-thousand dollar shipping fee to get the product returned to our manufacturer, charge storage fees for the time the barrels were sitting in FedEx's own warehouses, then charge us AGAIN to ship it back to us. This is what they all do. They are entrenched and control everything, so you have to play by their rules. We had to get our rep from another division involved to get them to stand down. They lost the fucking package! We lost tens of thousands of dollars in sales because we went out of stock because they lost it, and they wanted to charge US for the inconvenience! Then customers have issues with the carrier and blame us as well! "You should use a different carrier!" Which fucking one?!? We have used them all, and they all suck in different ways! We get blamed by everyone for things completely outside of our control, and then customers say: "I guess this is the last ND order I make!" like we are not just as helpless as everyone else to the asshats fucking everyone in this system. People thought Amazon was crazy for deciding to build their own worldwide shipping network from the ground up, rather than continuing to negotiate with FedEx. However, now that is looking pretty damn smart. If I had hundreds of billions of dollars, I would do it, too! Just take a look at the below article to get an idea of the situation.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-amazons-rising-shipping-costs/
That's Amazon, too. They have more control and buying power than pretty much anyone, and now shipping costs are a THIRD of their of their total revenue! You can see in that article that they can only do this because they have AWS. That's where all their profits come from, and they can lose money in other areas and still remain stable. We don't have the world's largest cloud hosting platform to fall back on for profits.
https://www.investopedia.com/how-amazon-makes-money-4587523
Because the other two segments posted operating losses in the third quarter, AWS accounts for all of the company’s operating income.
So every other part of Amazon loses money, except for AWS. Then customers literally write us saying: "Well Amazon can get me packages next day with free shipping, why can't you?" I wish I had a cloud hosting platform that just printed money! Then I could not worry about having to stay profitable in literally one of the most difficult industries in the world to compete in... Moreover, Amazon still CHARGES US for this! When you buy from us on Amazon, they don't just eat those shipping costs. They pass it on to vendors like us, so it is still small businesses shouldering the bulk of these costs. I wish things were different. I wish I had more control over the shipping and logistics side of things. I wish I could just hand deliver every package to every customer around the world without any tax.
In France, DHL has a 14.55€ brokerage fee. That's the minimum it can be, due to them handling brokerage. Then it should be 5.5% of the total for VAT. There are no import duties from the US to France for the HTS codes we use. How are they calculating 59.50€? Can you give me a breakdown so we can see what the hell they are doing?
https://trade.ec.europa.eu/access-to-markets/en/results?product=2106909869&origin=US&destination=FR