Amanda B.
1/5
Half of my product is being held hostage by LaunchPath Fulfillment in Springville 🙁 I fear I'm being taken advantage of as a new small business owner.
We were mistaken in our assessment that they had experience with international freight shipping based on initial conversations with them. In May we hired them to ship 700 of our product units from China to Utah. Unfortunately, it became evident very early on that they actually had little to no experience in international freight, and their communication with us throughout the entire process was constantly lacking and became quite arduous as we would have to initiate contact to receive any updates regarding the status of our shipment.
The entire basis of our decision to work with them was due to the fact that they agreed to “match” and “beat” the competitive shipping rate that we were already receiving from our current shipment company. The rate was $7,500.00 DDP (this means fumigation and taxes are included). We asked Tristan our point of contact (the owner's brother), to send us over an official contract. Oddly, it took him a bit of coaxing to do so. This contract confirmed our verbally agreed upon price with DDP included in the quote.
When our product finally arrived a month late, we were shocked to discover that we had been sent two invoices. One for $8,000, and another quite unexpected charge for a whopping $13,000 for “taxes”.
As you may know, it’s common for shipping cost to fluctuate slightly, so we willing paid the $8,000 without complaint, even though we were originally quoted $7,500. We did inform at that same moment, that we would not be paying the exorbitant $13,000 for “taxes”.
Tristan and his brother asked to meet with us in person at their location in Spanish Fork, and we obliged as we were hopeful that we could take care of this mistaken charge, especially after the whole shipping experience before the overcharge had already been challenging. In our meeting with both of them, they admitted that the shipment was supposed to be DDP but they had changed it sometime during the process. This change was never communicated to us either written or verbal. This change would have never been approved by us, as it would increase the cost grossly as I’ve shared with you.
We have done all I can to provide all the evidence, texts, emails, and the official quote from Tristian in efforts to show that I’m not responsible to pay for their mistake. My only assumption is that because Tristan is new to his brother’s company, that he made an error with our shipment and we’re now expected to eat this cost he incurred. They are refusing to take responsibility for the mistake, and are unprofessionally ignoring us. They have informed us that they will be holding our inventory (half of our entire inventory), even with the holiday season approaching.
DO NOT WORK WITH THEM.
