On October 17, 2012, I ordered some products from Amazon (USA) to be sent to Canada. In the normal process, it goes through Amazon Export Inc who pre-clears customs (via UPS) for entry. The customer (me) would prepay an estimated amount during the checkout process.
The packages would then arrive to me without UPS having to collect any custom brokerage fees.
On this particular order, however, UPS called my office to determine whether the products sent to me were for business purposes. I spoke to them and said, "No. They are not." And then I proceeded to tell them that they should already have been prepaid customs clearance by Amazon. We hung up, and I thought nothing of it.
A few days later my packages arrived.
My Amazon shopping experience should have ended there.
But it didn't.
A few more days later, I received an invoice from UPS in the amount of $44.60 CAD.
I thought it was strange because, as I mentioned above, my packages were cleared ahead of time. I thought nothing of it, and assumed perhaps Amazon's custom fees were underestimated and that there was an extra amount I needed to pay. I paid the bill as the amount wasn't much to me.
I looked at the bill a little later and realized that the bill had a few inconsistencies with it.
First of all, they spelt my name wrong.
Next was the address. My city was in Scarborough, and not "Scarboroguge".
This prompted me to look more closely at the bill, and that was when I realized the tracking number didn't match any of the tracking numbers on my order from October 17, 2012. In fact, it was an order from Zappos, and I have never ordered anything from them.
The tracking number on the invoice was 1Z6Y6E460425611661. Typing that into UPS tracking on their website shows that the package did go through Canada, and it did go through the processing centre where my own package had gone through. However, the final destination was... AUSTRALIA?
Clearly someone made a mistake. From my name to my city address, something wasn't right, and the information was obviously not transferred electronically.
It isn't farfetched to believe some UPS customs brokerage personnel eating his or her donut and mixing up the papers.
And so, I called UPS to ask them to fix it.
After spending 50 minutes on the phone with them, the person assured me that they will fix it and not charge my credit card. The customer service representative told me I would receive a phone call the next day to discuss about this case. I confirmed with them my phone number.
I never received any phone call and there were no missed calls.
A few days later, I see the charge on my credit card.
