Brexit

3 minute read

Thanks Brexit, for making the process of ordering and receiving a replacement for an aging peripheral so exquisitely painful. In the old days, goods moved from the UK to other EU countries effortlessly. Now, their transit resembles an Odyssean epic straight out of Greek mythology.

  • Day 1. Place the order. Get an email from the merchant, asking if I’m really sure I want to proceed with the order, given that I’m going to have to pay import duties when I receive it (and they want to avoid me returning the item when I find out how expensive and painful that’s going to be). Confirm my willingness to run the gauntlet, and see exactly how deep the rabbit hole goes.
  • Day 2. Receive notification from DHL that the order is on the way, with an estimated delivery date 7 days in the future.
  • Day 3. Order arrives in my country.
  • Days 4 and 5. A weekend. All quiet on the Western Front.
  • Day 6. Order arrives in my city.
  • Day 7. Order shows as "detained", but status page notes that DHL will contact me to obtain details necessary.
  • Day 8. Order still shows as "detained". Given that DHL hasn’t contacted yet, I contact them. Receive email from DHL asking me to fill in an authorization for them to handle the dispatch through customs. I fill it in and send it back immediately.
  • Day 9. DHL emails me to say they are "going to initiate the corresponding procedures for customs dispatch". Estimated delivery date comes and goes.
  • Days 10 and 11. A weekend. All quiet on the Western Front.
  • Day 12. I receive my daily status update email, informing me that my parcel’s currently in an "exception state".
  • Day 13. Another daily status update ("exception"), and the status page again tells me that DHL needs some information from me and will contact me to let me know what they need; given that they don’t contact me, I contact them, asking them what they need.
  • Day 14. I receive a reply from DHL, indicating that they are still waiting to physically receive the package (which seems false, given all the status updates showing the package’s transit — in DHL’s custody — from the source country to the destination country), and that I should write to the seller to ask them what date they sent it. Finally, later in the day I receive email from DHL inviting me to pay the import duties on the order, which amount to 32.6% of the cost of the goods. Why is this amount more than the expected 21% (this is the rate of the Value Added Tax in my country)? Well, it’s because DHL helps itself to 52.51€ for its "administration" services, in addition to the 9.99€ I paid for shipping in my original order (supposedly, to cover delivery in the span of "3–6 business days"). Mousing over to see the description of what these "administrative services" consist of, I am greeted with the dystopianly inaccurate claim that they refer to "assitance provided by DHL Express to facilitate the efficient clearance of shipments through customs processes; this includes documentation management, ensuring regulatory compliance, and handling duties and taxes" (emphasis added).
  • Day 15. Item is actually delivered.

So, in that 15-day itinerary, 9 days were spent with the package sitting on some shelf waiting to be "processed", while I received an irritating bombardment of inaccurate notifications and requests to engage in hoop-jumping. That they would charge me a premium to facilitate this circus, and have the gall to describe it as "efficient", is the most annoying part.