myuniversalshop.com : promising but shitty experience right now

If you are unlucky to have your parcel held by the Mauritian Customs, then you will most probably go through the new system, myuniversalshop.com, with which Mauritius Post has decided to partner with.

This myuniversalshop.com aims mainly at being a parcel forwarder, just like myUS.com and shopandship.com. These companies offer the following services:

• Provides you with a virtual address to which you ship your parcel (useful where you can’t ship directly to Mauritius)
• Allows you to track the parcel from your address to your home address
• Assists you with custom clearance and payment of associated fees
• Delivery to your door

Custom Clearance

Two of my parcels from the US reached Mauritius on the 7th March 2023…

The next day, I got SMS notifications, which sounded promising response times…

Since there was no official communication about the partnership of Mauritius Post and myuniversalshop, this sms looks just like the hundreds of spam emails I got into my mailbox.

I decided to ignore it until I got two letters delivered at home on the 10th March:

Uploading invoice

So, now that things were more official, I uploaded my invoice to the web site on that same day:

Then, from the Order page, you can see the status :

It is only on Friday 17th March 2023, that is, 7 days later, that my item was assessed and additional charges applied by the customs. You are then informed through another sms:

Wow. 7 days to get custom charges. That is nearly the same bad service of Celero / Aramex here in Mauritius!

Payment of charges

The order screen is now updated as follows, with charges estimated at $287.27 for a $25 item. I wonder if this estimation actually works or means something, as charges which follow are not based on this displayed value at any moment.

When choosing the Pay Now option from the menu, you are directed to this screen where you can see the charges:

And then, surprise!

You are now invited to choose from one of the different options

• door-to-door delivery – Rs 250
• time slot book (no more details) – Rs 150
• collect from post office – Rs 90

Yes, even if it sounds surprising, the Rs90 option always existed if you want to the parcel to be shifted to your nearest post office where you can pay the customs and other charges, without the need to go to the Central Parcels Office in Port Louis.

As you can see, the myuniversalshop do not offer you an option to collect your parcels from the Central Parcels Office directly.

Going directly to Central Parcels Office for clearance

As you have probably noticed in the notification letter, there is no mention of alternative clearance procedures. Despite this, I decided to print my eBay invoices and drive to the Central Parcels Office.

Once there, the procedures were similar to what was being done during all those years, except that I had to specify that one of my parcels were already assessed online as it seems that they keep these separately.

My two parcels were cleared from customs without issues, except that, I did not get my Rs1000 tax exemption on my second parcel. So, if you clear more than 1 item at the same time, only 1 parcel gets the exemption!

The most surprising part, I paid less to clear my first parcel, the same one which was assessed online!

Membership Costs

If you thought that myuniversalshop was cheaper than the other mentioned ones, you are wrong.

As the web sites allows shipment from South Africa only (for now?), let’s calculate costs for a parcel of 0.5Kg.

On top of being more expensive than shopandship, the paid options do not seem available yet…

And poor english “COMMING“…

Part of the myuniversalshop payment system went down a few times

While using the system, it did went down a few times…

When I contacted support, they did confirm that there was an issue:

Payment currency conversion

While writing this post, I tried using the payment again (for a parcel which I already cleared from the customs), and it did allow me to proceed. Meaning that the myUniversalshop inventory system is not up to date!

I might be a dumbass in Mathematics but the above conversion does not look legit… A South African Rand is usually around Rs2.6 not, Rs1.97 as calculated with figures above.

My thoughts….

The pros…

I like the idea of having an online system to upload invoices in order to clear your items out of the customs. So, this is a good move for Mauritius Post.

• Time saver
  If this system works as it should, then you won’t need to lose two hours to drive to Port Louis and wait up to 30 minutes in the Central Parcels Office in order to clear your items out of customs.
• Parcel History
  With everything available at a click, this system will be better at keeping track of your items which were cleared at customs

The cons…

Right now, It takes too much time!

But this partnership with myuniversalshop looks not solid enough for now.

If this is a trial run, we can understand but Mauritius Post must be clear about this by specifying that the online system is on trial right now with limited resources. Mauritians should also be informed that they can still go to the Central Parcels Office if they are in a hurry.

Mauritius Post : Give more resources to your customer service

Ah! If you need to ask questions, then you definitely need to be patient!

There is either probably no dedicated team to reply to queries, or there is not enough staff to handle all requests. In either ways, Mauritius Post definitely needs to review this in order to improve response time and efficiency.

No combined shipping for several parcels

If you have several parcels to clear, you will need to pay delivery for each one of them, whether you choose door-to-door delivery or Post Office delivery. In these cases, it might be more cheaper to get to the Parcels Office as it will be a savings of at least Rs90 per item.

Last but not the least, please ask a professional team to design this myuniversalshop web site… It looks like the job was done by a college student. Sorry, even college students can do a better one!!!

Cheers!