South African post NEW RIP OFF receiving fees!

Hi all

I had a nasty surprise when collecting my latest two orders at the post office yesterday.
They are now charging R24 at the counter for all international parcels received, no matter how low the declared value.
Thay say it is “customs handling fees”
This means anything ordered now that costs $1-2 has effectively doubled in price.
Banggood tend to split up an order and ship everything separately, which will now add to the cost.

Very bad news for anyone looking for small components.

I have another 20+ orders on the way, Nearly all under $10, so this is a significant cost increase.
Future small purchases will have to be combined to reduce cost which means no snapping up of bargains
Where is the fun in that???

Mumblegrumblebitchmoansulk

Same with my country, and that has been the case ever since (meaning several years ago), they call it here as ‘processing fee’ !

I suggest to ask your vendor if possible to ship your orders together as much as possible. Give them your order numbers.

Sometimes it’s physically impossible for them to ship together for the items are not physically all at once in the vendor’s possession (ie. a drop-ship item)

In Netherland the physical mail traffic is shrinking. And companies are emerging that are cherry picking the leftovers.
Leaving only the card senders to the traditional postal institutions. They respond with less service and higher rates.
Or invent separate fees for activities that used to be part of the old service level.
You and me are at the receiving end of the transport, with less options for evasive actions than a sender has.
Speaking of the senders. I don’t want to cry “wolf” but I expect “free shipping” will be over (or less) in the nearby future.

In few words - your national post loses times more than $1 on each your parcel. Your government had to enact new laws to change this situation.

You buy too much stuff as is .

knock it off .!

Yeah man… Here. Each package is charged $1.50 ‘Fuel surcharg’ and way worse, customs and duties can be a random number from $5 to $20 for small packages. If a chinese website splits my order after specifically asking that they don’t, if the second part is too small, I request them to cancel. The shipping, tax and duties are not worth it at all. :frowning: A while ago, I received a couple ‘free gift’ of some angle guides for knife sharpening ( $17 each) and ended up paying significantly more than that per package in shipping, tax and duties.

In my country we have to pay much more

We have to feed the bureaucrats of the Progresista government

Here in Germany up to 22€ are free of charges
most BG or Gearbest stuff that is not too big does get the green label and is not checked at all, even if there is 100$ stuff inside
theoretically I had to go to the customs office and declare those packages

i need to pay $1.50 for every item from overseas and 27.5% custom tax if the item is above $50 :person_facepalming:

Eish!! R24 are they crazy! Does the R24 at least mean that you will actually receive your package from Banggood and that it won’t be stolen in the process?
Have you had any incidents of items gone missing that were ordered from Banggood to SA?

BTW. Nice to see a fellow South African on here!