After several disastrous experiences, we gave up on DHL and went with a freight broker - a bit more expensive but not intractable on a really big order. I don't know which APHIS location you used. We came in via JFK. Generally things are inspected FIRST and then move on to Customs, as only APHIS can open the box. At least that's my recollection of the process. In the case of DHL, you have to go in every day to the tracking site and watch it like a hawk, because it will hit a glitch and just sit there waiting for you to do something (e.g., pay the duty). No one tells you anything, so you see that it is on hold and you have to call them and after a half-hour of elevator music, someone tells you what they are waiting for. In the case of customs, they have a payment page where you give your CC and then the thing is released. Sounds like you somehow got through that part. Customs is calculated when it arrives in port, not when you ordered it, so that might explain the discrepancy. You might get a refund of some kind if the Customs duty was wrong. Seems like some time ago I got two small checks in the mail from the US Treasury with a cryptic notation about Customs and Border Enforcement or something like that. I called the number on the checks and no one ever got back to me. So I cashed them and assumed it was a reduction in the customs. It was a trivial sum, but I don't toss a check regardless of the amount. Bear in mind that the issues begin in South Africa. Normally serious logistics companies are only as good as their local offices, which in SA appear to be staffed by utter incompetents. When the package gets off to a bad start, it only gets worse and not better. Folks don't realize just how stressful and time-consuming the group orders were for just that reason, both for us and for Leigh. Had I been on vacation at any time during those odysseys, it would have been disastrous. You just can't send your order and have the box show up like Amazon. You end up dragging the thing through the system like you're landing a 1000-pound tuna. Lastly, there's obviously a learning curve. We do this once and blunder our way through it, whereas the freight broker does it a dozen times a day, so they have a well-oiled machine. Bob _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> PBS Forum https://…