Rapid Shipping
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Shipping my items with this company has…
Shipping my items with this company has been very stressful, I can't personally recommend it. I'm moving from the UK to the USA and wanted to ship four small boxes of personal items. I've never shipped anything overseas before so wasn't sure how to go about it, but decided to contact Rapid Shipping as their website suggested they would handle everything for me: I would only need to pack and label my boxes, then pick them up from the airport. Communication was fast and efficient for the most part, and though there was a 10 day delay in shipping my boxes, I understand that these things can happen, and it didn't bother me. I only had problems after my goods had been shipped and they'd arrived at their destination. I thought Rapid Shipping would take care of the customs so I could pick my goods up, as per the import guide I was sent by a rep at Rapid Shipping, which says (and I quote) "Our agent in the USA will contact you before your goods arrive at the port to confirm exact arrival date. They will submit your documents to US customs to obtain customs clearance." This is not what happened for me, however. I only discovered after my goods had arrived at their destination that Rapid Shipping do not handle customs clearance after all; I was expected to do this myself. I was told I had to hire a customs broker at an additional expense so my goods could clear customs, and I was given 4 days to sort this out before my shipment would start incurring fees from the airport for being held too long. 2 of these 4 days fell on a weekend, so I realistically had 2 days to sort this out to avoid potentially high fees from the airport for holding my goods. This might be an unfair complaint as the invoice I received from Rapid Shipping did say "You will be responsible for all local airport charges, customs clearance and collection from airline" in smallprint, but I missed these lines and instead deferred to the advice I was given in the informational PDF (by the same representative, which was attached to the same email). I understand that this issue is partially my fault for not reading the invoice clearly, but I also think it was careless of Rapid Shipping to explicitly tell me "our agent in the USA... will submit your documents to US customs to obtain customs clearance" when this was not true. I don't want to be too negative when the company was generally helpful, but I wish the customs clearance process had been explained to me more clearly and I hadn't been given contradictory information.