It’s been a while since I last complained about a business, but this experience was too much not to share. A few weeks ago I ordered a new MacBook Air from Apple.com. I sent the MacBook to MyUS forwarding mailbox and then selected the cheapest shipping option to Kuwait because I wasn’t in a rush to get it and I’m cheap like that. MyUS ended up shipping it with a courier I hadn’t heard of before, SMSA Express. I was like fine, whatever, I wasn’t in a rush anyway.
The package took around 10 days to arrive in Kuwait, similar to how long Aramex would take so it wasn’t too bad. But that’s when I ran into a problem. The package went out for delivery last Saturday, I didn’t get a call, and there was no attempted delivery. If you check the tracking via their website, it shows that it’s out for delivery, if you use their WhatsApp service to check the tracking, it says that the receiver requested a new delivery date. So I started calling customer support:
Sunday: I called customer support who told me they’d have someone call me back regarding delivery. Nobody did.
Monday: I call customer support again and they tell me their tracking system hadn’t been updated since September 25 and that my package was showing still in Bahrain. I tried to have them explain to me how my tracking data was more current than theirs and they couldn’t.
Tuesday: I called customer support again, they don’t have a local office so I have to keep calling their Saudi number btw (thank you Skype). They tell me my package will be delivered today or tomorrow.
Wednesday: I called customer support, and they told me my package will be delivered today.
Thursday: This time when I called customer support I made a big fuss about how my package has been out for delivery for one week and they keep promising me delivery every day and how no one ever calls me. I get transferred to a manager who promises he will make sure my package will get delivered today before 3 PM.
Less than an hour later while on my way to Shuwaikh, I get a message from their driver asking me for a location. I call him up and ask him if he prefers to deliver in Kuwait City which is the original address listed, or Shuwaikh since I’ll be there. He tells me he’s delivering to Wafra 🤦🏼♂️. My office is in a building called Wafra Downtown Tower, so the dispatcher had read te first word, ignoring the rest of the address and decided that my package should be delivered to the area Wafra. I explain to the driver that the name of the building was Wafra, but the address was Kuwait City, he told me the office told him to deliver to Wafra and that’s where his deliveries are. So I ask him if I could come to him, he said I could and that he was in Farwaniya, so I got his location and headed there.
I get to the driver less than 15 minutes later and find out that SMSA Express use a local courier called OCS Express for their Kuwait deliveries. I finally get my package from the driver but he then asks for a payment of KD23.900 for customs. I was like it’s a laptop, there is no customs on laptops in Kuwait. So I ask the driver for an invoice and he says he doesn’t have one. Told him there was no way I was going to pay without at least an invoice. So he calls up his office and I talk to a lady and explain to her the situation. She says she will send me an invoice later, I told her I needed it first before paying, it’s a normal request. She told me it would take around 5-10mins, I was like fine I’ll wait and hung up. A few minutes later driver comes up to my window and hands me the phone. It’s the lady again, supposedly the accountant isn’t there and the driver needs to go make his rounds. I told her I’d been chasing this package for a week and I even drove all the way to Farwaniya to pick it up, I’m not leaving without the package. I hand the phone back to the driver and he goes back to his car. A few minutes later he comes to me and shows me a WhatsApp he got of a photo of the invoice. It said 23.900KD so I ask him to send me the photo and I hand him the amount cash to get my package.
After he left, I look at the invoice carefully and they charged me 20.400KD for customs. So I call the company up and talk to the lady I had spoken to earlier and explain to her that laptops don’t have customs charges so how was I being charged customs? She transfers me to another person who I assume is an accountant or manager. The guy tells me the item costs 408KD which is why there is customs on it. I told him the value doesn’t matter since it’s a laptop, and there are no customs on laptops. He says the description says there were notebooks in the box as well. I was like wtf, they’ve written notebook cuz it’s a notebook computer and if he doesn’t, believe me, I still hadn’t opened the box and he can check! I then proceed to tell him it was illegal that they were charging customs on a laptop when the government doesn’t charge customs and that I was going to report them for this. He then told me they would refund me the customs charge of 20.400KD but not the remaining charges. I told him fine and I sent them a payment link and got my refund.
So much drama for such a simple thing as a delivery. The fact that I was being charged customs when I shouldn’t have been is also super dodgy. If you ever use MyUS make sure you don’t select the cheapest delivery so you don’t end up getting your items shipped with SMSA and OCS!
