International Entrepreneurs - Any Experience with BongoUs?

[Aletheides]

This is probably a shot in the dark.

I am about to sign up for this mail forwarding company and would like to know if anyone has any experience with them: bongous.com

[BCT]

Hey,

For what it's worth, I would not go with Bongo. I've read some questionable posts about them, and I don't see much in the way of company history. Try my fav MyUS (Access USA). They've been around - you know you'll get the goods you ordered and they have great cust. svc.

A few others out there are GlobalMailForwarding and USAbox.com mail forwarding.

I wish you success.

[Aletheides]

Thanks for the reply.

I signed up with them a while back and so far they have been really good. Packing is perfect and the prices are the best I have seen on the thus so far.

I did see one negative complaint from someone that was using his friends credit card, and they have a policy that they cannot ship packages to you if you're paying with someone elses credit card (to protect against credit theft). I saw this same complaint in a few places.

edit: The service from these guys is absolutely excellent.

[ferrer76]

Hey, I just heard about Bongo that it is the one of the famous US packing services . They provide packing as well as they are the best provider of Entrepreneurs also. Up to how much extent its true I don't know.

Regards
Ferrer

[BongoUS]

Hi everyone!
I provide customer service here at Bongo International.
Wanted to drop a line and let you know that if you have any questions whatsoever about the service to please contact us:

(203) 683-4894
www bongous.com/chat.php

Thanks!

[joemitchell]

You should try usamail1.com - they have excellent service and will repackage your shipments if you order multiple things so you save a lot on shipping. Their prices are great, too. Definitely worth a try.

Good luck!

[Vicar007]

well, i have used their services and they are very costly. but since 2 years i am using viaddress which are much cheaper that myus and bongos. and they fast too. items are shipped in 2-3 days with no issue and they are always in excellent conditions. i would highly recommend viaddress this is their link
viaddress dot com

[viaddress]

I'd suggest you to go for viaddress.com.
They are providing really fast and affordable services in US, UK and other 223 countries.
Their live chat facility helps you in keeping track of your delivery status. Separate plans for both individual and business needs are available.

Enjoy shipping with viaddress.

[rachrich]

Here are some I found and have had done business with namely BongoUS, MyUS, Shipito, Viaddress, of course sent parcels via Fedex, UPS. Well, Fedex and UPS are quite expensive and so is Bongo and MyUS. They are the big daddys of the business and I feel for one time sake I ended up paying more for shipping that waht my stuff was actually worth! I looked into viaddress and didn't find any reviews stating how long they have been in business for etc..Then I went with Shipito and they sealed the deal! Not only were they cheap but also fast and they consolidated few of my boxes into one big parcel which saved me a bunch of money. Hope this helps for future!

[DrunkG0D]

Just a short introduction first of all, I am a business owner. My company is based in Asia and I have many suppliers around the world. Most of which, located in the United States. I first encountered BongoUS about 2 years ago and back then made the decision to go with BongoUS as it seemed to me, at the time, like they were the best all rounders in their field and industry. Slightly higher price point, but makes up for it in speed and customer service. Something which I required should any of my clients have serious time constraints and needed urgent deliveries.

Everything was fine and dandy for most of the 2 years with, of course, several hiccups. These were easily resolved at the time and did not cause much problems for me. Recently however, things have taken a turn for the worse.

The whole situation unfolded as follows. About 3-4 weeks ago, we placed an order from a store in the USA for several items (I shall name this Store A). These items were scheduled to be shipped into BongoUS under my name to be later forwarded back into Asia. However as it turns out, a day before the items left Store A for BongoUS, our client changed his mind about the order and wanted something else. Thus we promptly cancelled our order from Store A and ordered the new request from Store B. However Store A made an error and sent the package out to BongoUS anyway even after a refund was issued to us. This was fine as we assumed the Store A would call FedEx and have the items redirected back to the Store as was done before on past cancellations.

The problem started escalating when, Store A, didn't recall the items with FedEx but rather allowed the package to arrive at BongoUS. Both packages from Store A and Store B arrived, I assume, on the same day at BongoUS. However by this time Store A had already called BongoUS and requested for the items to be returned to the store. This is where my first gripe at how BongoUS handled the whole situation begins.

1) BongoUS did not bother to inform me that they were contacted by Store A requesting for the items to be returned, and had already made plans to have the items returned (they did not inform me of this either). Instead they had the items listed in my inventory. (I found out much later that the items listed in my inventory had already been returned)

When I instructed BongoUS to ship the items from Store B out to me later that day, my Inventory showed that 1 item was missing from the list of items originating from Store B. On questioning of BongoUS, they decided to take their own sweet time to figure out what happened to the item. A total of 5 days passed before I found out what happened to all my items. During these 5 days, I made daily calls to their US head office from Asia, this costs me alot of money, daily emails and even the use of their live chat. Spoke to multiple "customer service" staff, with little to no result. All I got were empty promises.

2) Staff WP tells me that items are missing and that they are trying to find it. I tell WP to tell me exactly what item is missing and he cannot tell me because he doesn't know exactly what he's looking at. He knows generally what the item is but I can't get specific details as they're not proficient enough to identify exactly. To solve this problem I ask WP to send me pictures of all the items (I'm talking about like 4 items so thats 4 pictures). This is so that I can identify exactly what is missing. He says yes yes yes he'll do it. After a day passes, 2 days, weekend, still nothing. -> Empty Promises

3) On a fresh Monday I call again and look for WP, however WP is busy so I speak to a different staff named GG. On talking to GG and explaining the situation AGAIN. I get told that management has labeled the item as lost/missing. As such I was give a choice. Either accept a refund or the management will purchase the same item as replacement. Seeing as I needed the item urgently, I accepted the refund. However before they actually issued the refund I went ahead and reordered a replacement and had the item express shipped to BongoUS. I seriously needed the items urgently so had to do it this way as I did not know how long BongoUS would take to repurchase a new set. I also managed to finally, FINALLY, get 1 miserable picture of 2 items, which I then got them to proceed to ship out. This was supposed to be the shipment from below point 1 above. Yes they held my shipment this whole time and already took payment. On my end I expected the items to arrive on Friday and it is already past the weekend the items haven't even left their warehouse yet.

Constant reminders that the items were required urgently over and over again over the phone and emails and live chats fell on deaf ears.

4) The next day, I get an email saying that they found out the item was really missing but was returned to the wrong store, so now BongoUS will not be refunding the item as it is no longer missing. They also decided to hold my shipment for several more days while the item is returned BACK to BongoUS so that the items can be shipped out together. -> Not sticking to their words. This comes after I have already made my urgent reorder of the missing item and assumed that the refund was on the way.

After another angry call, I managed to get them to ship the package with whatever is available in my inventory out that same day.

Also rather than arguing with them some more I decided to handle the refund myself and get them to return the item back to Store B where I reordered the supposed missing item. So does this mean problem resolved? Think again...

5) 2 days later the reordered item arrived at BongoUS, unfortunately so did the item that was mistakenly sent to the wrong store. Doesn't matter though I expected something like this to happen so I just issued a request for 1 out of the 2 items to be sent to Asia and the other one I left untouched in my inventory.

6) Next day, my item left the US and was on its way to Asia. However the remaining item disappeared from my inventory. Sent BongoUS an email asking where it was, they promptly said that they would be returning it to Store B on my behalf. -> I found this just plain rude. After so many problems and issues you'd think they'd learn their lesson and at least ask first right? Nope they decided to just do it anyway.

So in an effort to halt the return before more problems occurred, I had to call them again. Quarrel with the customer service staff GG to have the item relisted in my inventory. GG being quite rude over the phone threatening to hang up etc etc. Granted I raised my voice abit but after holding it in and controlling myself for over 3 weeks, you seriously can't blame me for raising my voice. And she had the cheek to tell me to not raise my voice. She keeps trying to explain the same thing over and over again when I'm talking about a whole other issue. Worst part of all, she tells me I'm wrong about the whole sitiuation. Like WHAT!? If I was so wrong about the situation, I wouldn't have to keep calling to explain. A simple email would have sufficed. But since that didn't fix it... Well you decide for yourselves.

I was getting so mad at that point I wanted to speak to the manager in charge. Hopefully I can finally talk to someone who can set the whole thing right and recover my faith in this company. But nope. From the horses mouth: Manager not around, no manager today and finally last but not least the icing on the cake... "Sir, it doesn't matter if you talk to the manager, she won't be able to fix anything for you today..." FAIL! EPIC FAIL!

To sum it all up. I have since given up my account in this company and am trying out several others. Hopefully you all will make the right choice in deciding which company to go for and that you can learn from my experience.

Cheers!

PS. During my experience with BongoUS multiple attempts to speak with a manager or someone with higher authority came up zero. If you decide to file a written complaint because talking to their CS Staff doesn't work, don't bother because all you will be asked to do is write a message to your account support log or send them an email to the support email address. This will be replied by a CS staff and it takes a full day for a reply. So don't bother.

**A warning to BongoUS, when you start assuming that your customers are all frauds and decide to protect the vendors so much more than your customers, even those that have been loyal to you for so many years, you are just shooting yourselves in the foot. This is not the way to run a business. Let the vendors worry about their own customers defrauding them. You should worry about how to do your job, and getting it right.**

[ezeuba]

I see I am not the only one getting a hard time from BongoUs. I signed up for this service recently and I am regretting this now. I needed to buy a phone from The US which was not available in Nigeria my country. I searched and could not find a merchant who will ship internationally to my country. Google being my friend, gave me BongoUs. I signed up, and only after signing up did I start seeing useless restrictions about not being able to purchase directly from a website and have them deliver to Bongo, instead I have to use Personal Shopper service from Bongo, which incidentally charges 10% of the cost of the purchase because of my country of residence. However, there is nothing in their terms of service that says anything about this (bongous.com/legal.php). 1st screw by Bongo. I went ahead to place an order from Ebay. They declined and stated in an email that they do not purchase from auction sites (nothing about this too in terms of service), after a full day of placing the order, during which time I imagined that the order was being processed. 2nd screw. I searched again for the phone and found it on another website. I went ahead again to place the order this morning and got an alert from my bank about the transaction from my card account, but at the time of writing this, a full 16hours after placing this order, nothing from Bongo. No acknowledgment, no confirmation, no decline. Is this how to run a business which involves someone trusting a company with his/her money and goods? I am surprised and I am considering taking them up on the issues which they screw me for, which were not in the terms of service.
My advice to all: STAY AWAY FROM BONGO. It's not worth the headache doing business with them.

[robert mathews]

Hii.. wish i could share my good news with viaddress.com

I Received products with ease from the Viaddress.com, they also delivered the products in time, great customer service , very low shipping rates when compared with the other competitors

Viaddress.com allows people in turkey to shop from US retailers like Amazon.com, Ebay.com,Zappos, Newegg

[jesterx]

Wow THAT WAS INCREDIBLE!

[ilyou]

This is probably a shot in the dark.

I am about to sign up for this mail forwarding company and would like to know if anyone has any experience with them: bongous.com

i am not sure but i have experience with viaddress.com they have lower price than bongous anf they have good customer service