Hello Tiffanie,
Thanks for the follow-up. Sadly, I had to go all the way to Casablanca myself to get all my 3 packages — I had to pay a small fortune for many unncessary fees I did not ask for nor were they my fault in any way. I’ve already contacted Nica from Forward2Me, and Cc’d the UPS CR email. The full story is down below:
As I mentioned before, I went to get those packages myself, and I had to pay a lot of totally uncalled for fees, not to mention at least a dozen road tolls, because Casablanca is a long, long way from home (Tetouan). I was literally charged ~$180 for storage, and “delivery receipts” ($43 for each delivery receipt as if they delivered my package according to the incoterm (DAP). THE NERVE!) even though I didn’t ask them to keep my package there for that long. They were the ones who were supposed to deliver the package on time, and as I’ve mentioned before, DHL’s process when it comes to clearing customs only takes 3 days, and I never have to pay a penny for any stupid unnecessary services that I never agreed to pay for, and it wasn’t my fault at all. In fact, the last time I used DHL to buy 3 products that cost $426 in total, 6 months later, all my import fees (around $81.70) were refunded (see attached screenshot).
Thing is, I wasn’t even notified by UPS via email when my 1Z4369956798482466 made it to their warehouse (the usual email I get that lets me know that I should send them the item description, and a copy of my ID (front and back)), and Issam Hariri (UPS broker) kept blowing me off as if I were trying to be his boyfriend or something. It was utterly disrespectful, but I kept trying to convince him every time he showed up to try looking for my important package again after he claimed it wasn’t in the system, so I was like, “There’s no way I have more information about my package publically than you do from the backend. There’s just no way. Here, this is a live tracking page; not a screenshot, so please, man, just give me 30 seconds. Why are you like this, man?” He did invite me to their “authorized personnel only” room (Finally! Hallelujah!), and then when he tried the tracking number again, he did find my package this time, while the first time, he just printed the same delivery receipt for the other package 1Z4369956791820666 twice. So when he did find my package, I was like, “See? I told you. All I needed was 30 seconds.” The printer was out of paper, so I had to wait a couple more minutes for him to finish talking to another UPS customer who had some weight or value miscalculations, it seemed, so I waited, and when that guy went away, I told Issam about the issue, and then he printed the receipt over LAN, and told me to go get it from the other room where they charged me that $180 AFTER I paid my customs duties. Makes me glad that I can find that little shred of humanity in people in order to do their job for once. And remember, all this is happening while we’re super hungry, dehydrated, and sleepy, so you can imagine all the crazy random thoughts going through my head, like waiting for the warehouse to get hit by a meteor. Another angry customer told me that UPS claimed his package was under $125, so he didn’t have to pay customs, and yet he waited 2 months for it, and they still told him to wait longer for the package to be delivered to his doorstep. Heck, even AliExpress free shipping doesn’t take that long. In fact, it usually takes 17 days for AliExpress packages to be delivered to Morocco, so what’s the point of paying 40-100 dollars if packages are gonna take that long for no reason other than sheer incompetence? When I pay that much for shipping, it’s like I’m paying for jet fuel, and speaking of fuel, I had to pay $60 for gas. My friend felt so bad that he barely accepted the $100 I promised to pay him for helping me with this. He jokingly said, “I keep telling my wife that “Ahmed is an atheist, and yet I’ve never dealt with someone more real, and kind like him.” Note that the assumption here in Morocco is that if you’re an atheist, you’re automatically going to hell, and you’re a horrible person; most people here don’t know about the “eating babies”, and all that, but I digress. Ironically, my sense of humor is what kept me from losing my sh*t completely, especially after I got hit with that $180 invoice out of nowhere. Despite everything, I was the least miserable person in that warehouse.
I swear I’m not making any of this up, we were so tired, and yet I was still full of energy somehow, especially after I managed to convince Issam to look up my package (1Z4369956798482466) again, and realized it was still there — customs inspector thought it was a computer, by the way. While my buddy’s driving, at one point, he was like, “I can’t even understand what you’re saying anymore, man.” While we were planning to have some great shawarma tacos in Tangier, we came across a McDonald’s in Casablanca, so we decided to eat there 3 hours sooner instead, just so we wouldn’t feel like zombies anymore. While I still consider it a victory (since the whole point was to get all my packages), it just felt like we couldn’t wait to leave Casablanca.
Customs charged me a bit over $200, which I had no problem with — I was actually over the moon before I was hit with that $180 invoice from hell. One of the documents I brought with me was a total estimate of all the fees I was supposed to pay, but to my surprise, while Med Africa Logistics charges only $15 per delivery receipt, UPS charges $43. Also, while the aforementioned logistics company charges $0.25 per day (here’s a simple formula: $0.25 x number of days in storage x package weight), I have no clue how UPS got to that $180. The invoice also included something called “administrative fees”, around $25, I think. The customs agents near the area entrance close to the parking lot took all the invoices, and I was too traumatized to think about taking pictures of all those invoices beforehand, note that my battery died anyway, but luckily, when I managed to pay customs duties via my bank app, it was at 2% while battery saving mode was on — forgot to bring my USB-C cable and my buddy only had Lightning for his totally smashed iPhone 8 and microUSB.
Please note that all this happened while we were super hungry, and dehydrated. My friend and I only slept 6 hours before leaving for Casablanca at 6AM, and got there at 11AM, then had to deal with the bureaucracy from the moment we arrived until 5PM — we were basically “human Ping Pong”. For a split second, I got so confused by the sheer amount of papers that I thought I was applying for a visa or something.
I asked one of the customs agents respectfully, “Is all this meant to discourage us from buying things online or something? I just don’t get it.” And she was like, “Not really. To be honest, sometimes I even find all this stuff confusing, and annoying, but what can you do?” The customs inspector, after he saw my estimates, he was like, “Are you trying to start your own company, and compete with us or something?” As a joke, of course, and I was like, “Nah, I just like to make other people’s jobs easier when possible in order to save time. I’ve done a lot of research before coming here. Back in middle, and high school, I used to help my teachers, and principals repair and optimize their computers from time to time. I’m just that kind of person that you can either love so much [out of appreciation], or hate so much [out of pure envy].” And he was like, “No, it’s okay. It’s good that you’ve done all this.” He then said that my Amazon Echo Dot (5th gen) needed approval from ANRT, but I showed him yet another document I printed, which included the authorization code for my smart speaker. He, and some young male intern got so confused, trying to figure out what to call the smart speaker in French while submitting the relevant data. Oh, well.
Finally, it may seem like I’m just being dramatic, which is totally okay, but one thing I know for sure, I will never ever use UPS again (unless it was reformed by some miracle, but I’m not going to hold my breath), and I’m just glad I’m never going to see any of those people again. “Anti-consumer” doesn’t even begin to describe the Silent Hill plot we went through. Just glad I didn’t lose any of my packages though, and rest in peace, my Ray-Ban sunglasses.
Sincerely,
Ahmed Anssaien