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matthew knott
04-01-2014, 9:19 PM
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

Allen Rawley
04-02-2014, 12:44 AM
We purchase from Shenhui in China and send to our China factory (inspect and fix any issues) then sell into the USA. We handle the shipping. I have visited the factory and met the folks and had a nice dinner there. I have also visited all the major Chinese suppliers as well, located in Jinan, and Dongguan, Guangzhou area as well. In my opinion (and our most recent purchases were five of the small low cost units--within the past six months), is that Shenhui offers a very low price and excellent value for that price. With regard to problems on the machines and missing parts, there were no missing parts. Two of the machines were wired for 110V, yet the accessories were 220V. What we did was to add an internal transformer (because we had no time to waste) and took the 110V up to 220V for the accessories. Regarding support, it is there and fairly good. I find the English understanding adequate and we get the customer problems solved in a relatively short period of time. As for this kickback issue, I know nothing about that and it does not apply in our case.

A bit of advice for USA buyers purchasing directly from China, is that the customs can be a little tricky and the importer brokers will, at times, charge whatever they can get away with. For example, over the years, I have used many different brokers. One in particular was always nickel and diming me ($25 here, $125 there), and it was a game to argue these trumped up charges away. Most of the time, thanks to my argumentative associate, these added charges were reduced to zero.

Rodne Gold
04-02-2014, 2:21 AM
In the sticky at the top of the forum , it has been mentioned SEVERAL times that it is best to ORGANISE YOUR OWN SHIPPING!!!!!
The ultra low "shipping" price quoted by ANY of the laser companies or most chinese suppliers of anything is nowhere near what it will ultimately cost you. FOB is the way to go.

matthew knott
04-02-2014, 5:00 AM
I was pretty certain that the ultra low shipping price would be nothing like the final payment price, that was obvious. What I didn't realise is that they use loaded shipping rates so they receive a payment back from the shippers way in excess of the quoted shipping price, I expected to have to pay but we where quoted £530 door to door by a trusted shipper, £200 by shenui , we received a notification today that we have £987 of additional charges from the shipper so that's £1200 and it's still at the port, someone at shenui gets a big cut of the additional chargers! That's what I have a problem with , it's greedy and dishonest and because of this I won't use them again , live and learn I guess!!

Kev Williams
04-02-2014, 10:40 AM
Strictly for what it's worth-- I was quoted $500 to ship my Triumph- which was in a 4 cubic meter crate and weighed 1113 pounds-- to SLC, and was told customs and other fees would be around $1000, actual total was $943. There's 16 charges on the broker invoice, only 4 of those are over $100 (DDC charge, ISF Filing fee, customs entry fee and customs duty). No other funny charges arose.

This was the first time I ever imported anything. I bought the machine strictly via email, dealt with only one person. The only phone calls made for the entire transaction were to the broker, and to the warehouse in town the machine was delivered to. I paid Triumph the machine plus shipping price I was quoted, paid the broker, done. No surprises whatsoever, and I WAS expecting a few. Maybe I got lucky?

Khalid Nazim
04-02-2014, 12:56 PM
Matthew,
I imported my Shenhui using my own arrangement and it costed me CAD1300 door to door including payment to Canada Customs. In my experience Shenhui were very professional and at no point in time from the start of my conversations with them till today have I found them to be dishonest or "cheats".
Did the quote of GBP 500 included VAT/Customs charges? Did the UK broker give the break up of the additional charges? Finally, what was included in GBP200 quote of shipping from Shenhui? Was it door to door?
I understand that you are upset but I think its unfair to label Shenhui as greedy/dishonets/cheap based on your understanding of this situation.

Regards
Khalid

Rich Harman
04-02-2014, 4:03 PM
I've imported two machines from Shenhui. The first, I let them ship it, the second I had my broker arrange to pick it from the factory. I definitely recommend arranging shipping yourself but I really didn't have any problems when Shenhui put it on the boat. Things happened that I didn't expect but that is just because it was my first time inporting anything. I saved a little bit by using a broker and it arrived a little quicker too.I have no reason to believe that Shenhui did anything approaching a scam.

matthew knott
04-02-2014, 4:59 PM
We imported quite a few machines from Shenhui with no real (other than the usual broken tube, missing bits minor problems) trouble. This isnt a case of what was quoted, not being carried out, we expected to get shipping to the UK, we spoke to the clearing agent today and they confirmed that all the additional charges are being sent back to China. Shenhui agreed (without our permission) to these charges. Now it maybe that Shenhui have not in themselves scammed us but someone has, more likely the shipping agent but they pay commission back to the shipper.
You can only pull this kind of deal once as you will lose the customer, and this its what has happen for Shenhui and us, $23'000 order now going to someone else. It could be they where just extremely incompetent in their choice of the shipping agent but the fact remains, (and we checked this with 3 other shipping companys) that we are forced into paying 4 x the going rate for shipping.

Here's the order of events

Ask Shenhui for shipping quote, told £200 (this does not cover charges at uk side)
Shenui arrange shipping and charge us £200
When machine arrives we are told there are £1100 of extra charges
Now please bear in mind these aren't REAL charges, they are made up by the shipping company, £202 are real port charges the rest is sent back to the china shipping company, you have no choice but to pay as they have your expensive item, when you payup commission its simple blackmail. We where told we would have to pay uk clearance charges, no problem, but these other charges we have no choice but to pay, we cant get another company to do it.

Simply Put why are £900 of (described as uk port charges) returned to china and how pockets this ??