Bongous - Bongo International - Bongous.com Fraudulent third-party international forwarding company. Internet

Like you, I live in Canada, and company I wanted product from doesn't ship here. I am originally from the USA so I know how frustrating simply ordering a product can be.

I understand that the companywhich has to make moneyhas a 5$ initiation fee, for each time you order, or it has charges a minimum of $15 per month (for a minimum of 3 months) for more robust shipping options. However, they also say that they add an extra 10% fee for their services, but I don't see any detailed info about how they come up with their charges for shipping to other countries. Perhaps it would be best to sit with them and (in a chat) at their cost, online, and ask them these questions, making sure you record the conversation (remember to tell them you are doing this, so that it is legal).

An order could be rather expensive, given the 10% fee, and then the additional shipping charges, and I have no idea if they make any money off the postal service. Some companies do, they offer you something for very cheap, but then charge you double for the postage, and make money that way.

If you had a thousand dollar order, they would charge you the $5.00 fee, and then the 10% for a total of $105.00, that is their fee, and they they have to add shipping to that, which could indeed be very expensive. Ordering 5 books from Amazon USA to Canada the other day got me a fee of $80.00 just for shipping, in that case, it's easier and cheaper to buy the books straight from Canada, even though I have to pay extra for the books.

So, they charged this customer a $5.00 fee, but he wanted to have his order cancelled because Bongo allegedly charged him $68.00 for shipping. Here I am confused, because I don't know who actually makes the initial shipping decision, did the customer, or did Bongo? Not clear, but it sounds like Bongo did. Maybe, just maybe, Bongo cannot be a "reshipper" and charge him that 10% fee, so the way around that, which may be quite legal and I am sure it is, is to weave the fee into the actual postage.

In any case, the product cost $23.00 and their fee was the 10% fee, for an additional $2.30 plus the $5.00 initiation fee, for a grand total of $30.30. How could a less-than-a-pound product cost $68.00?

True, I agree that the $68.00 shipping cost sounds an unnerving clang through the valley, and I don't understand why Bongo didn't return the product to the merchant, which is the only reason the actual merchant kept trying to bill the customer.

All in all, I should hope that customershave the explicit right to cancel any order or shipment when the order is odious. We are paying a fee, a number of fees, to get a service, but that should mean we get a SERVICE. (Isn't there a song like that?)

I had a friend send me a Braun electric toothbrush, from Nashua New Hampshire the other day. My friend mailed it USPS (United States Postal Service) and they aren't the greatest in the world, but they sure beat the Canadian Postal Service, but that is another complaint. The product weighed in at less than a pound, and she sent it First-Class International Mail from New Hampshire to Montreal, and it cost her $6.97. She sent it in a 12.25" x 17.75" bubble mailer which cost her $2.29, so the total cost of shippping was $9.25. Of course, I have no idea where in Canada this customer lives, but unless he is somewhere out on Baffin Island in the North Pole, I cannot for the life of me understand why or how they could charge the poor guy $68.00.

I think he did the right thing, but what im wondering is, how good is Bongo at explaining ALL these things BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER we are using their services?

I looked at their videos and my head is still spinning. First you have to sign up for the service, read the fine print while you are doing that, which is next to impossible, and it barely scratches the suface, so, I think that Bongo has to do a much much better job of advertising their product.

If they can clearly explain their services, they we get have a fighting chance to use them, but I find their site confusing, and this is how I ended up here, wondering who they were, and whether or not they were for realand how real they were. The feeling I get is that they are a small company, and that is why the customer services are so poor. Whenever any merchant balks, for whatever reason, to pass the customer off to another employee, or a supervisor, THAT is a red flag.

So, Bongo, the screen shots are pretty and all, but I was left with a hundred questions...for the most part, seems to complicated and time consuming to sift through all the small details, and fine print, and that, coupled with even a few dissatisfiedcustomers who are then hung out to dry, leaves a Bongoish kind of taste in my mouth.

Customers aren't always right, but they don't need a thrashing on an internet site, especially when they haven't done anything wrong. Also, sharing information about them and making suggestions, (Fraud) with little or no real evidence is risky business for any company, which raises another red flag.

I don't know about other customers out there, but for Bongo to label Vietnam and another country as "fraud countries" and then to personally attack an individual voicing his dissatisfaction (something none of those people ever did about the Bongo staff) is very unprofessional.

Similarly, I don't quite get the insult by Bongo staff, who say that "Peter" doesn't seem to know where he is from...He is from h*o Chi Minh, which is present day Saigon, which they don't use anymore, a city in Vietnam? What is else is there to know, and how does that indicate that he doesn't know where he is from? As a business, if you have info on a customer, you may or may not legally be able to voice that on a public website, but if you have solid information, you might want to present that, instead of making accusations. The fact that Asians typically use western names doesn't necessarily mean they are frauders, the majority of them, and Indians, and Malaysians, and the Chinese do it because they claim that most Westerners are too ignorant to pronounce their names...

Having worked in banks and specifically in the Fraud Department of a major credit card company, it is a fact that people from all corners of the globe commit fraud. There are just as many fraudulent businesses in the US and Canada as there are in other countries, so we should lay off the racial stereotypes. Incidentally, the only internet fraud I have ever run into was in the Tri-State area.

I appreciate the detailed comments by this user, and they raise some serious red flags. What I would like, however, is to see view reports from customers who have had positive results working with this company, and I see none of those.

Being more transparent, a potential redesign of their website and an internal changing of the guards within the Bongo establishment might mean more revenue for them. After all, S-E-R-V-I-C-E, that's the tune they should be singing, not resigning themselves to stereotypes and bashing.