My family had sent a saree for my wife and a shirt for me on the occasion of Durga Puja from DTDC courier, who has charged INR 4200 for the delivery of the same to Toronto, Canada from the recipient. The package contained other religious items (flowers, photos, etc.)
From the tracking we came to know that DTDC has handed it over to DHL for delivery. Although the package came early (within 3 days), but DHL had charged for an additional CAD 60 (approx. 2873 Rupees) as "COD" - Collect on Delivery.
We enquired about it from DHL and found that the item was shipped as a "Commercial sample" for which import duty, Taxes and handling charges were due - we had to pay that to comply with Canadian laws.
Even my name was changed to as "Manager", as if I was running some shop! My delivery address was clearly a residential address. Not sure who has done these modifications - as these were not present in original shipping address.
This is clearly cheating. In order to extract their additional "handling fees" they exposed our items as commercial goods. I occasionally receive such items from home and never had to pay a commercial surcharge or border duty - even from DHL.
Oh, and I forgot about the package.. these fellows packaged an envelop in such a way that it took a shape of large football!
I strongly advice against this lousy company - these guys are unethical and cheats.