Coffee Chaos

And so it drags on.  I thought it was all over and that my order of coffee had been distributed amongst the staff of the Customs and Excise Office, Manila (I had visions of them sitting at their desks trying to pry open the little capsules to extract the coffee) and that was the end of it: never to be heard of again.  But no.

I didn't give up immediately.  I went on-line to DHL Asia and found that I could chat with one of their representatives. They were most apologetic and promised that they would refer the problem back to the Philippines and the matter would be resolved and someone would be in touch.

But then nothing.  So I went back on-line and left a snotty message about appalling customer service and their indifferent attitude.  Again, the silence was deafening.  At this point I gave up and was resigned to the fact that unless I paid the exorbitant amount of duty I wasn't going to ever see my coffee.  And I wasn't going to pay, so I definitely wasn't going to get it.

I've also been to Singapore recently so I was able to buy it there more cheaply than if I paid the duty so I have enough supplies to be going on with.

Then a couple of days ago I received a phone call once again asking me if I was going to pay the duty??  It kind of caught me off guard as I'd written it off and it was now weeks outside the deadline they'd given me to pay up.  I explained that I hadn't received an explanation of why the duty amounted to 152% of the value of the goods - especially as the shipper had explained on their website that the maximum I could be expected to pay was 50%.  The women on the end of the line then asked if I was refusing to pay.  I said I was absolutely not refusing, it's just that I hadn't been given an explanation.  She said she would sort it out and get back to me.

Yeah, right.  I won't hold my breath.