White lady: Who is the thief? Nigerian Customs or Fedex?

Hello everyone. I am kind of new here. I think this a good place to discuss the plight of Nigerians in the hands of Courier services. I have a pathetic story to tell.

See, my brother in the States sent us some items through FedEx. The items include a CPU, a teddy, 3 textbooks, 1 slim digital camera, 1 discman, 2 wristwatches and some chocolates. He had to pay close to $600 to as delivery fee and he was assured that the goods will be delivered to our doorstep.

You can imagine how we felt when FedEx came to our house without our goods but a bill of 63,000 naira. They claimed it was customs duty for our. Well, what could we do? We ran around, gathered that amount and went to their office to pay the so called "customs duty".

We were once more "assured" that our goods will be brought to our home the next day, which was a Friday. FedEx came as promised with our goods, but guess what? They said we had to pay the sum of 3,000 as NDLEA charges before we could collect our parcel. Since we didn't have 3,000 naira with us, the delivery man took our parcel back with him. we had to wait till Monday to pay the money and collect our parcel.

To make matters worse, when we opened the parcel, we found out that the discman and one wristwatch was missing. Also, the installation CD for the digital camera was broken and one has to pay $135 to download the software. You can imagine how furious we all were.

Please can someone tell me if this is the norm with courier services in Nigeria? And which courier service do you recommend we use in future? Pplease I need your views.

mauhammadil: [color=#006600][/color]

DEAR ALL,

SINCE 2007 I HAVE USED ALL MOST ALL THE INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES FROM USA, CANADA, UK AND CHINA. SO FAR I FOUND PILOT COURIER WORLDWIDE THE BEST IN THE RATES AND DOOR TO DOOR SERVICE. BEST THING IS THEY HELP/GUIDE ME (I AM SURE TO OTHERS ALSO) TO SAVE ON CUSTOMS, NO HIDDEN CHARGES AND OFFER LOWEST INTERNATIONAL RATES. ONE CAN SEE THEIR RATES ON THEIR WEB SITE (www.pilotcourierltd.com) RIGHT AWAY RATHER THAN BEING ASKED FOR THE EMAILS (MOST COMMPANIES DO TO COLLECT OUR EMAIL ADDRESSES). I DO NOT REMEMBER THEIR TOLL FREE # BUT YOU CAN GOOGLE IT, THEY ARE ALL OVER.

GOOD LUCK AND REGARDS,
MD ADDLINNE