Pete goes to confront DHL
Trip Start
Feb 06, 2007
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201
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Trip End
Jan 14, 2008
Rurrenabaque, Bolivia
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Another email offered us the option to pay $790 into a Western Union account held by some unknown Joe Blow, and they would forward the laptop to Trinidad (at least 14 bus hours away) when they had got round to completing the paperwork. Can you believe this is a huge international courier company ? The only safe bet was for Pete to go to Santa Cruz, and to keep her sanity Barb to stay in Rurre. The way it all worked out in the end was that Pete created a big stink in Santa Cruz, threatened to walk down the street shouting that his visa had expired and it was all the fault of DHL, and get himself arrested. DHL HQ in the US got in on the scene, we paid the $790 which would have been waived by customs if they had known the laptop was a replacement for a stolen one, and DHL Santa Cruz were told to sort it all out (they still took 3 more days). Now we have a laptop, are waiting to see if customs will refund our $790 and DHL Australia are investigating. Our advice is, NEVER use DHL to send anything urgent anywhere. This has cost us 2 extra unwanted weeks in Bolivia, a huge amount in extra hotel bills, food and transport, customs duty, and the fine for overstaying our visas, with a large dose of stress thrown in. To cap it all, a DHL employee covering her back lied that she had phoned Barb in Rurre to make sure she was all right.
