Impex Uk & Iks Mauritius review: Rip off 3

I would strongly recommend anyone to not use IKS cargo. I shipped my personal items from Australia to Mauritius and to my disappointment and frustration, many of my personal items were stolen. IKS did not even try to investigate further to how this could have happened under their custody. Furthermore, our tv which was commercially packed came back broken with the inside packaging destroyed. This could have happened only by mishandling. We have paid IKS cargo a lot of money for their services and we are now out of pocket of more than rs 200, 000 with all our stolen goods and broken items. PLEASE do yourself a favour and find another company to ship your things.

I agree with OP. People should avoid IKS like the plague. I used them for personal effects sent by ship from the UK to MRU. It is amazing how they charge you a small fee for every step of the way, excluding customs charges which you also have to pay on top. When i was done paying and paying, they told me my boxes were at their warehouse in the freeport side of the harbour and they could home deliver it for an extra fee or I could come back again the next day to pick them up from their office. So that would have been the 3rd trip (trip1 - give them details and sign off; trip 2 pay bills). So trip 3 would have been to come back again for collection. To me a trip by car also forms part of the cost and I wanted trip2 to be final one. I couldn't be bothered paying any extra fees or waiting, so i asked them how i could get to their warehouse and retrieve my 3 boxes. On the way to Quay D, there's a toll booth where you need to show ID and pay a small fee. Inside the compound it's a labyrinth of roads and as per Mauritian standards, there are no signs which could help you find your way around. The IKS directions was so bad, i stopped at 2-3 wrong warehouses before finding theirs. Showed a guy my paid receipts and possibly paid another flippin fee there, I cant remember. After a while, someone took my boxes out on a fork lift (only after i went in this dirty warehouse and identified my boxes). One of my boxes was smeared with dark grease on its side and top but i didn't want to start an argument. I was so fed up. They offered no help to load my boxes in the back of my car. At least i got my stuff and vowed to never use them ever again in my life. I didn't even think of posting a negative review back then to warn people: Find another agent (courtier).

That was until this year. A UK online shop sent my stuff tracked by air and their UK delivery company, Skynet, is partner with IKS. You only find this out when the tracking has stopped updating for a 1-2 days and it's stuck to "in transit." Not even updated to "arrived in destination country." Then you get a phone call from IKS and if you miss it, you get a very strangely written email from IKS which details their fee and it excludes the customs charges that you have to pay on top. That fee is called 'VAT collection fee' or 'handling fee.' For our local post office it's Rs56. For DHL it's Rs 345 (same price in UK) and Celero Ltd, it's Rs 250. They are fixed fees and on top of that you still have to pay MRA's customs charges. Some may apply variable punishment fees i.e. the higher your order value is, the more they will rip you off (because possibly they know you are good for it?).

Now get ready for this and why people who have a rip-off feeling after dealing with IKS should feel like they were right all along. IKS wanted Rs 775 from me! This is more than twice the fee of DHL and of course you still have to pay Customs charges (Vat and possibly duty for things like a bag). I challenged this price and all i got were stories that they have costs and the parcel would get destroyed if unclaimed. Somehow the lady thought i'm that dumb and won't have the parcel sent back on grounds of extortions.

Here you go some unknown Mauritian company called IKS wants 2.25 times more money than DHL for a parcel the size of a shoe box i.e they are more premium than DHL. YES! DHL has its own warehouse and customs officers at the airport. You can see this when the tracking info updates. So DHL also has its own cost but why do they only charge a fixed VAT collection fee of Rs345? Who are those IKS people to want more? Not only that, the IKS lady told me they needed the money to consider taking my parcel into their care. So it was sitting somewhere in dusty PATS warehouse unclaimed and was not even with them?

I phoned the shop in the UK, explained the problematic situation with IKS and they had Skynet recall the parcel. This is customer care! It still took IKS about 20 days to get the message that the parcel had to be returned and finally updated all the missing parts of the tracking information and out of spite added: "Attempted delivery. Customer refused." According to their own staff, they wouldn't consider dealing with me unless I paid them, so the parcel was in some customs controlled warehouse. How could they have attempted delivery?!? In the UK Skynet took more than a week to return the parcel back to the shop where refund was immediate. A whole months passed between ordering, refusing to be extorted by IKS and the parcel going back. I would say avoid both Skynet and IKS for my future shipping needs. Shops in the UK too should do that too or risk getting same bad reputation as these amateur shipping companies and losing customers such as myself.don't get extorted, say no or find another way to get your parcel out or to bypass IKS altogether. Goodluck guys.

Having read your comments I was very worried...but nothing could be further from the truth...ok it wasn't as straight forward as I hoped it would be, but this was down to Mauritius customs making several annoying requests (import certificate for toys?) So as far as I'm concerned, I was very satisfied, the people there were very helpful and I managed to clear my car and personal effects very quickly...I should also point out that to avoid getting to much problems, I did do some research as to what the charges would be and what the requirements were for cars etc...