As an FYI for anyone order a laser from shenhui be aware of a scam they pull, if you allow them to do the shipping they basically look for the shipper that will offer them the biggest (Id call it a kick back) rebate form the shipper, effectively they MAKE money on the shipping as massive charges are placed on the receiver of the goods, I suspect most unscrupulous Chinese pull the same scam. I certainly wont ever be using their services again, This is very underhand practice and a pretty shocking way to treat there customers.
Always IMPORT yourself, be prepared for a machine with missing and broken parts that WILL need fixing and quite a bit of engineering expertise. The below is of what Shenui pull, its of a forum with people that have the problem we are now facing
I have read this thread with great interest and noticed some very interesting comments.
A common mistake that is made when importing goods is that when goods are sent prepaid it is not the fault of the UK NVOCC in regard to the UK charges. The shipper at origin will in most circumstances book the shipping with whichever agent gives them the most "rebate" to put the goods in their container. This actually means that you, the customer, pay them for the goods, and they then also get paid to ship it with someone. They then do not inform you of the costs once the goods arrive in the UK, thus when you see the charges they look like a "rip off" as you described.
Unfortuantley it is not as simple as comparing two companies UK charges. As mentioned above comparing our charges with CMI's charges. This is because the level of rebate is different and thus the UK charges are different. One way or another there has to be a cost for shipping goods. If an agent at origin is giving the shipper a larger "incentive" for booking with them then the cost has to go somewhere, in these cases with the consignee.
This is a common problem that a lot of NVOCC's get labelled with. For example if it costs £100 to ship from A to B but the agent at A is paying the shipper £25 to ship then the cost is £125, this additional needs to be reclaimed somewhere, this somewhere is point B.
To get greater control over the costs you would be better off switching terms to FOB. in this instance the cost of you paying freight, terminals, docs is actually less than if you paid just the UK charges on a prepaid shipment. The shipper may charge you more for the goods but the overall cost to you is far lower.
In regard to the customer service side of things it does often amuse me that as we are a large company we are not customer service orientated, or offer that "friendly" service which you can get elsewhere. This is simply not the case, and i can say this as someone who has worked for the competition, as well as working for a freight forwarder. We employ a number of experienced staff to cater for your needs. On imports we have a number of internal sals staff who assist with every clients needs, for exports i actually run the inside sales staff and know the levels of service i expect from my staff. In addition we also offer a number of online tools to assist clients with their shipments and time saving. These are tools such as track and trace, online sailing schedules, online pricing, online labelling and many many more.
If anyone would wish to talk to me about any shipment they may have, import or export, then please let me know and if you are not happy with how i handle yourselves then i would be very suprised.
I hopefully look forward to your comments and hearing from some of you. I hope the above has tried to explain the situation a little further, which i do understand can be very frustrating, and dont get me wrong we are not perfect, but i do believe on the whole we offer a more comprehensive service than any of our competition.
Regards
Chris Blowers