! This is part II of this post, please read it first.

[EN] How could it be that all this surreal situation could get even worst? How could this gift my friends were waiting for (for over a week) gets even more bad surprises?
With a new very bad surprise: more than 100 EUR charge, or no delivery! What? Exactly that. So, apparently they charge for being retarded and moving back and forth because they are not able to find locations or even ask for directions. How nice is that?

How can you charge for something that was already paid? And, even if so, you would charge the sender, not the recipients! Of course I did an international bank transfer to my friend immediately to cover that. We are talking about a value that’s a quarter of the average Portuguese salary. Better yet, the goods plus the (useless) delivery service plus taxes costed slightly less (90 cents) than those 100 EUR. In the end, I payed double the goods’ value thanks to the amazing guys monkeys at UPS.

The payment invoice, after scanned and sent to me happend to be a “factura pro-forma” which is in Portugal the equivalent to a budget proposition. So, my next step is to check how legal that was. It doesn’t smell good at least. Apart from the obvious rip-off for a mediocre service, the only explanation I get from UPS for the outrageous delay (last post) is a stock copy-and-paste reply for unsatisfied customers (which I am sure it’s used a lot).

Definitely, next time I will order to Switzerland, book a flight and deliver directly the goods at my friends’ doorstep. Even if I book an hotel and eat in reataurants, it will be cheaper and none has to deal with morons on the phone (to follow up daily). Now I remember why I stopped ordering books from Amazon while in Portugal, (where books are expensive as hell). In the end there was always too many “extra expenses” from importing to delivery, and even in bulk orders I would end up paying more in extras than the actual order itself.

Stay tuned because this is definitely going to have part III… I am calling them soon after I get some phone recording equipment ready. I already told them that. Next step (before it will probably require legal action) is demanding a (detailed) explanation for this unofficial invoice.

[PT] Desculpem, mas quando tiver mais algum tempo vou traduzir este post e o anterior.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 20:12 and is filed under Emigrantolandia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.