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Today, I finally got my bed back. The good news: The days of the sleeping bag and the air mattress are over. The bad news: It could have happened much earlier, if it had not been for my shipping/forwarding company and its particularly humorous understanding of customer service.
Thursday two weeks ago my U.S. shipping agent gave me the phone number of Andree & Wilkerling, a Hamburg, Germany, based shipping and forwarding company, so that I could inquire about the status of my 20 foot container. I called them, and got connected with their customer representative for international shipping of people's personal goods. Let's call her Tusnelda, to protect the not-so-innocent.
Tusnelda told me that the container had arrived in Germany, but that they had not put it on a truck and contacted me, because I had not paid the port charge. Don't ask me how I was supposed to have paid a charge I didn't know about. In this case, however, I had prepaid everything in the U.S. "Not so," Tusnelda said, "I don't know about any such prepayment, and we will not deliver without you paying the port charge." I asked whether she couldn't inquire whether I had paid but she told me: "Sorry, your problem."
So I called my San Francisco based U.S. agent late on Friday night and he promised to push this information through again. In fact, when I called Tusnelda the following Monday, the port charges were off the table. "However," she said, "We will now have to charge you for an additional week of storage for the container, because you didn't pay right away when we told you last Friday." "Oh," I said, "Couldn't you have said that earlier? Besides, it is not my fault." But she told me: "Sorry, your problem."
Tusnelda then gave me a whole list of other charges I had to pay. I complained: "All of those were supposed to be included, my U.S. agent told me." "Well," she said, "your U.S. agent is obviously clueless. We always charge you." I insisted: "But at least I didn't incur the additional storage cost; Rather you and the intermediary U.S. agent caused that." To which she answered: "Well, all U.S. agents are clueless when it comes to Germany. Sorry, your problem."
I was speechless: "And how was I supposed to have known all that?" "Well," she said, "It is obvious: You are particularly clueless." She continued: "Every week I get a person like you, and I find you highly frustrating."
I'll end my report here. Obviously, it got bloddy, but ultimately unsuccessful for me. Neither did I get the unwarranted charges of the table nor did I get an apology for Tusnelda's blatant offenses. She must be the daughter of the owner of Andree & Wilkerling. I paid the charges, and eventually got my stuff, but not after checking every step along the way to final delivery to make sure people were doing what they had promised.
Is it welcome back to Germany, the customer abuse land? I hope not. Unless you are a masochist, I recommend against using Andree & Wilkerling's services. I had two shipments, and the other one went through ECU Line GmbH, also located in Hamburg, Germany, without any problems. People there were courteous and professional.
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