Hemant Kshirsagar 📣 retweetledi
As you know I am in the process of moving back to India 🇮🇳 from Ireland 🇮🇪.
I want to share my personal painful ongoing experience with the “Indian Customs + Courier Company Nexus” saga.
How they loot citizens & customers while hiding behind stupid laws and poor practices 👇
1. I shipped personal belongings (used and mostly clothes and electronics) from Dublin (my present stay) to Kanpur (my hometown) via @DHLGlobal on 21st Oct.
2. While shipping the DHL executive opened and checked my packages and also made me sign an undertaking that none of the stuff is new.
3. I was promised the delivery by 27th Oct.
4. My packages reached Delhi within a day and the nightmare started after that.
5. Shovik Kundu, a DHL executive called my sister and told her that I (who’s in Ireland) will have to visit the Customs office at the Delhi airport with my passport to get this checked and cleared by the customs. Plus, there’s a Demurrage charge (₹20 per kg per day) levied after 2 days - basically storage charges for my packages until they get cleared.
6. I told them to open the bags again and check that there’s nothing new in them. Plus, DHL executive here in Ireland already checked them, plus I have signed an undertaking that they are all personal belongings and used.
7. Upon several requests and DHL purposefully wasting days (I will explain later why), another DHL executive Samiksha Sharma called me after 3 days of this conversation with Shouvik.
8. I explained to her my whole situation - my father passed away in July, hence I am moving back to India because of a painful personal situation, I am arriving in Delhi on 6th Nov - have a train to Kanpur within 3 hours of landing. That’s how I planned my travel because I wasn’t aware of custom related issues and DHL’s processes. I am also travelling with a 14 month baby girl and it will be impossible for me to do the customs process on the 6th because of all of this. Plus, Demurrage charges are a nonsense because this delay is being caused by DHL and Indian customs - this has nothing to do with me.
9. She told me that I will also have to pay 50% duty on the declared items 🤯 + also pay formal clearance charges (over and above the duty) + demurrage. I said this is nonsense and a practical nexus to extort money.
10. Most importantly DHL never informed me about any of this before shipping - I had visited the office once before shipping and I also called the customer care to understand the process.
11. Now Samiksha emailed me again today (email attached). I have also attached some of my responses for additional context.
12. They are asking me to pay Demurrage charges + Duty + “formal clearance charges” - for used items that they had promised to deliver at my doorstep without any charges.
My take and conclusion:
🇮🇳 I am not gonna pay a single extra penny and I am ready to let go of the entire package. DHL didn’t inform me about any of this process before shipping and purposefully coerced this situation to blackmail me into paying and put me into this situation.
🇮🇳 This will be my punishment for “daring to come back to India”. I haven’t even landed and the Banana Republic circus has started. I was forced to come back because of a personally painful situation and I am already regretting my decision.
🇮🇳 This was the last time I will ever use DHL and ship anything in India.
🇮🇳 India’s customs laws are a joke and private companies, agents, and customs are also making money in cahoots while exploiting citizens.
CC: @cbic_india , @Delhicustoms , @AirportGenCus , @nsitharaman , @PMOIndia , @DHLGlobal , @DHLExpressIndia , @DHLExpressIre
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