Two customers bring 30 kilograms and get two different bills. Nothing has gone wrong — they were carrying different things.
Goods are priced by what they are
Clothes, shoes, phone accessories and car parts all sit on different rates, because they take different amounts of space, carry different customs risk, and some need a different airport entirely. Thirty kilos of fabric and thirty kilos of laptops are not the same cargo to an airline.
Some things are priced per piece
A phone, a laptop, a camera — these are charged per unit rather than per kilogram. A laptop weighs almost nothing and is worth a great deal; pricing it by weight would be pricing the box it came in.
Light and bulky costs more than heavy and dense
An aircraft runs out of space long before it runs out of lift. A sack of cushions weighing 5 kg takes the room of 40 kg of hardware, and the price reflects the room, not the scale.
This is why we ask what is inside. Tell us it is clothes and it is priced as clothes. Say nothing and it is priced on the general rate, which is almost always more expensive than the right one.
What you can do about it
- Ask your supplier to pack tightly. Air, in a carton, is something you pay to fly.
- Consolidate. Three small orders arriving separately are three consignments; arriving together they are one.
- Tell us the goods type accurately — under-declaring to get a cheaper rate is what gets a consignment held at customs.
- Ask us what your goods will cost before you buy, not after.
