I wasn’t even sure if I could make a proper entry because I am very angry and frustrated now. The broker called today and told me that they can get the goods to us possibly today if I give them the go signal. The bad news was, the total charges she quoted to me previously did not include Freight Forwarding which brought the total to twice that of the original amount! It was very annoying because they did not provide that information at the beginning. As early as 23rd of December, we were already waiting for them to provide us with the quote. I have been calling almost regularly and the one who was in charge of it was the only one who knew about our situation. We should have seen that as a bad sign that we shouldn’t go with them at all. The lady was on leave until Jan 9 and only on the 13th of January were they able to give me the quotation which was even incomplete. The packages arrived on the 11th of January and somehow they lied to us saying that it will still take a few days until warehouse charges kick in but actually on the 12th it already started and that the daily amount was negligible! No way Jose! The total estimated total is now 3x what was quoted at the beginning .

I am really very sorry for myself for all these stupidity. It’s too late now, our goods are now somehow held hostage by them and the Customs licensed warehouse. Another stupid mistake we had is that the three appliances we brought at 50 hertz.. technically it will not work with 60 hertz here in the Philippines . They will break down quickly. But we overlooked that fact that there is no easy to solution to this. We assumed it was something easy. Nothing is easy here at all. It was not even the government that gave us a hard time but just ordinary business people. They are simply untrustworthy. I am very very sad. Next time, we will not let this situation happen wherein we have no leverage at all. They had full control of the situation.
Let’s just all charge this to experience. We have learned the hard way and let’s be thankful this did not leave us broke.
However, we would really be extra extra careful from now on. For me, it’s even more of a pain because I am in my own country.

I wonder if ice cream could help cool me down now.