Sending Boxes from Sydney to Esquel, Argentina

Last week our boxes (15 in total) finally arrived.
We sent them in June 2012 from Randwick, NSW, Australia and they arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina on the 11 November 2012. However we had bought a door to door service from a company called Discount Freight. Little did we know what a sham this company and the owner Phillip Leon Abadee is. We bought door to door service but of course our items never arrived to our door. We even paid insurance. Instead our items arrived to the port of Buenos Aires and we had to pay everything including delivery here to our door. My parents ended up travelling to Buenos Aires, travelling back and forth from their apartment to the port of Buenos Aires, every day for 5 days during a very hot spell, doing all the "tramites" and paperwork to release our items and sending them by courier to Esquel.
What I learnt from this is:

a)Never ever use discount freight. This company has a list of complaints (we found this out too late).
There is also a blog about his company with 215 posts or complaints. This page also has many complaints about his service.
Phillip Abadee who runs Discount Freight and other freight companies used to be a councillor and alderman for Randwick Council  in Sydney between 1991 and 1995 and his uncle is/was a judge. His uncle is Alan Abadee AM RFD QC - Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales (1990-2000). So really he should know better than to rip people off, to commit fraud.

We have gone to the NSW Office of Fair Trading to make a complaint but nothing was really done. It was his word against ours.

b) Never send personal items by ship to Argentina, send them by registered post, it may cost more but it will arrive to your local post office. In the end it costs more to send by ship and deal with all the bureaucracy and hidden fees everywhere.

Anyway our items finally arrived thanks to my parents.
My children got their toys, summer clothes, books in english and I got my things.





In other news....all week it has rained and now our garden is green. The willow still has its leaves and it s a bit cooler.





February is here strong and full of life. Children are still on holidays, the days are still long but are cooler.
In our little world, toys are all packed away in the ikea bookcase we use as storage.
Joaquin can finally play with all his Thomas trains, his Little People and puzzles.

Zalia finally got her barbie car, a dolls cot, dolls and a little people's doll house.











Comments

Nick Ingall said…
Thanks for your information about Discount Freight. We also had the same problem but it was too late. It ended up costing double and was over 3 months late.

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