Many people in Botswana with a penchant for shopping know the feeling. You’re looking to buy something that shouldn’t be so hard to find but here in Botswana, you may as well be looking for a needle in a haystack. In short, the shopping experience in Botswana is beyond abysmal. The retail space heavily leans on South African retailers, who are allegedly guilty of reserving their oh so passé rejects for the Botswana market at inflated prices.
A new mall pops up, and lo and behold, when the doors open, shoppers are subjected to the same tired South African stores that quite frankly, we should be cutting right back on. Why? Because they reportedly reserve ‘the best stock’ for the South African market. Worse still, the South African stores unashamedly over-inflate their prices in Botswana. As such, many of us strongly believe we are getting the raw end of the stick and certainly don’t get our money’s worth.
With the advancement of modern technology, many avid shoppers and hustlers have now taken to shopping online, far beyond the southern African retail space. But this also presents its own hurdles. For whatever reason, most countries don’t ship to Botswana. They may deliver to South Africa, maybe even Zimbabwe, but hardly any EU or North American retailers of note deliver to Botswana. Luckily for us (or not, depending on your opinion after you’ve read this article), some eagle-eyed businesses came up with the brilliant idea of ‘helping’ shoppers the world over buy from their favourite stores abroad. Enter parcel-forwarding companies.
What are parcel-forwarding companies and how do they work?
Countless parcel-forwarding companies out there have spotted a gaping hole in the market and are fully taking advantage of it. While global retailers snooze, parcel forwarders are laughing all the way to the bank. Sadly, these companies are not always noble – or at least in MyUS’ case. For this article, I’m shining the spotlight on MyUS because out of all of them, most of you will probably have seen the ubiquitous MyUS adverts that litter the internet at least once. The company advertises aggressively across various online platforms. I’m also discussing MyUS because I have experienced its service firsthand and would like to share my honest opinion with shoppers who may be considering using the company.
Savvy customers are getting around these artificial territorial restrictions by using these forwarding services. These services are making a huge profit. Parcel-forwarders such as MyUS receive packages and register them to the shopper and usually provide some sort of storage for a fee that covers various package handling services and an international shipping fee. The package-forwarder ships the parcel out, and the shopper receives it at home.
Once customers register an account with a parcel-forwarding company, they are given generic addresses in nameless industrial estates. Individual post office box numbers are described with terms like “suite no.” or “dept. no.” or “room no.” to give the impression that it’s a hotel or large residential address, not a post office box. The idea is that when the company receives all the items contained within a shipment, the agents repackage it, charge the customer and ship the parcel. On receipt of the parcel, the customer clears all associated custom duties for the release of their package.
It all sounds good on paper, albeit a very roundabout way of shopping online that comes at an exorbitant cost and sometimes other dodgy issues. I have only ever had firsthand experience with MyUS, which I used twice. The first order went without a glitch – it took forever to arrive, but the service itself went smoothly. With my second order, I swore off ALL parcel-forwarding services based on the shoddy service I received from MyUS. While the service certainly solves a huge issue for avid shoppers across the globe, I concluded it simply wasn’t worth the amount of grief it comes with.Issues presented by parcel forwarding services
Issues presented by parcel-forwarding services
Communication problems
Any form of miscommunication that occurs between the shipment owner and the forwarding company can create problems. If there are gaps in the provided data, this could impact the efficiency of the shipment and delivery. Date deficiencies are a major cause of delays in international shipping. An experienced freight forwarding company will be able to go some way towards addressing these issues. If there is no easy way of communicating with the parcel-forward, a simple issue can escalate into a stress-inducing dilemma.
Unfair pricing
If you take care of shipping yourself, you can monitor the costs associated with the whole process. If you use a freight-forwarding company, you may be unclear about what costs are being applied and how they’re being calculated. This is why it’s important to compare several quotes before choosing a service. The cheapest may not be the best, however, and it’s important to ask how the charge was calculated.
Lost shipments
No matter what measures are taken to ensure the safe transit of goods, lost shipments do happen. There is always the risk of lost goods or problems with severe weather or shipping delays and failure. That said, even if you handle the entire process yourself, you may still face these problems.
If a parcel goes missing or an item is damaged, whose fault is it? While the retailers may have carefully packed an item with due care, you cannot always be certain that these middlemen will do likewise. Also, are the couriers the parcel-forwarders choose for onward shipment as good as the ones the vendors choose for initial dispatch? You can be certain that if something goes wrong, the retailer will be blamed and carry the burden of any refund or chargeback. But arriving at that point would not be easy.
Freight-forwarding companies aren’t regulated
Although freight-forwarding companies play a major role in facilitating global trade, they are not all properly regulated across the world. Be sure to check the background and credentials of every freight-forwarding company you consider. Choosing the right company to work with gives you all of the benefits of using a freight-forwarding company while reducing the risks.
In the event you are scammed, Paypal, much less your bank, will be very little if any help.
My personal experience of a parcel forwarding company: MyUS
I’ve only used MyUS twice, and to say I’m disgusted by the company would be the understatement of the century. I don’t know if this company ever knew anything about decency and integrity, but my experience says otherwise.
On February 2, I placed an order with giant UK retailer, Sports Direct. On February 12, MyUS charged me $113.64 for the shipping. I understood this to be for the invoice totalling 191.48GBP – because that’s how it worked with my first order. Additionally, I was paying a monthly subscription of $9.99.
As per MyUS stipulations, I uploaded the merchant invoice to indicate ALL the items ordered in the one consignment and the overall value of the order, in part to determine charges and also package all the items so they are sent out together. That way, the shipping would be charged as ONE fee. On the invoice I uploaded, it clearly stated:
“Jacinda White – valued at 15-GBP – This product is delivered by Regatta and it will be sent separately from other items in your order.”
To my horror, on March 7, MyUS debited a further $258.12 from my Paypal account – claiming it was for a second order from a different company valued at 130GBP and weighing 4.4kg.
Attempts to seek an explanation from MANY MyUS agents to clarify what the charge was for got me nowhere. I tried to explain there’s ONLY ONE order, for them to check against the items listed on my uploaded invoice to ascertain they were, in essence, charging me twice for the same order.
What’s most baffling, as I was later to confirm on receipt of the second parcel, is that MyUS put down the weight as four times the original one, and I was being charged $258.12 for ONE item valued at 15-GBP, which they valued at 130-GBP! All my explanations fell on deaf ears, with ALL MyUS agents fobbing me off until ultimately closing the query without resolving it. I asked MyUS to send me copies of the two invoices showing these were two separate orders, which would put the matter to bed, but that never happened. I didn’t get a response, and instead, they closed down the query as resolved. I explained Regatta and SportsDirect were one entity, but I was ignored.
On March 18th,I took receipt of the order and just as I suspected, the two tracking numbers MyUS sent me were ONE and the same order. As DHL Botswana and the local customs authorities wanted to charge me twice for the two orders before being custom cleared, I explained what had happened with MyUS and pleaded with them to open the two packages and compare them against the invoice. And indeed, they confirmed they were the same order sent out separately!
MyUS broke its customer pledge. The idea is for customers to send their merchant invoice after placing an order and request that it be sent. Once MyUS has received ALL the items listed on the invoice, it is then supposed to send them out as a single package. MyUS decided to split the order and then not only charge me twice for the same order but also almost triple the second charge ($258.12), which I’m to believe is for this one flimsy item (a short-sleeved blouse) they claimed weighs 4.4kg.
From the countless customer complaints on the internet, I’ve since learnt that MyUS does this ROUTINELY. I scoured the internet for customer reviews and observed many similar complaints! Danish consumer review website, Trustpilot has pages upon pages of this type of complaint against MyUS! They need to be stopped.
It’s my belief that MyUS does this deliberately to milk more money out of me and other unsuspecting customers who desperately need their service. This order was a very exhausting process of back and forth due to MyUS’ blatant greed, jaw-dropping stupidity or BOTH. As much as I’d like to continue shopping abroad using MyUS and other parcel- forwarding companies, I have resolved NEVER to go there again. You would do well to do the same if you want to keep your hard-earned money!
If I could give MyUS an accurate rating out of five, with zero being the worst, it would be a big fat ZERO on all counts. As for customer support? Forget it. MyUs has a WhatsApp support number which is manned by agents who just churn out generic messages without addressing your specific query. Worse still, there is NO DIRECT Customer Service email address – a HUGE bugbear of mine. When you do get a response to your WhatsApp query/ contact form message, your query is answered by what feels like a million and one agents – you’re issued countless reference numbers with zero cohesion until you’re ultimately beaten into submission.
For more MyUS reviews, visit the following links to get the full picture of how MyUS blatantly robs customers like you all over the world of their precious money: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/myus2.myus.com and https://www.reviews.io/company-reviews/store/myus2-myus-com
Have you shopped online using a parcel-forwarding company including MyUS? How was your experience? Please share your story with us, whether good or bad.
Reference: https://smallbiztrends.com/2020/12/business-review-sites.html
