Shipping goods home

My wife, Kathy, and I took an “Ancient Kingdoms” tour to Southeast Asia with Overseas Adventure Travel (Cambridge, MA; 800/493-6824), Jan. 29-Feb. 21, 2009. This was an excellent trip on which to experience the four countries of Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, but I am writing about another matter that may be of interest to travelers.

During a stop in Vietnam, we purchased a decorative stone lantern and paid to have it shipped to our home in the States ($200 lantern plus $80 shipping). We put it all on a Visa card.

Upon the lantern’s arrival, via FedEx, it was considerably damaged.

My first instinct was to call FedEx, which I did, only to find out that for international shipments the shipper for the store must file the claim, and the shipper receives any compensation due to the claim. Oops, that left us out in the cold.

‘No,’ I thought, ‘I will call Visa and put a hold on the charge until it is resolved satisfactorily.’ I explained the circumstances to the Visa representative at Citi and was told that since the lantern was in our possession, they would not hold the charge, or, in this case, reverse the charge, until the matter was resolved.

I followed up with another call to Citi a day later and the decision was once again confirmed. Now we were at the mercy of the shipper, with no control at all.

Just for fun, I called American Express and asked the hypothetical question of how they would handle the situation if I had used their card. (It could not have been used since AmEx was not accepted by the merchant.) I was told that with any AmEx card, they would put a hold on the charge, investigate and not require payment until the issue was resolved.

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. I sent photographs of the damaged lantern to the merchant/store/factory, Minh Thuy (679 Kinh Duong Vuong, P, An Lac, Q. Binh Tan, Ho Chi Minh City; e-mail minhthuy_art@yahoo.com), located on the edge of the city, and they sent us a new, undamaged lantern in due time.

(It is my belief that if OAT takes you to merchants, other than the numerous street vendors, you can rest assured they are reputable and will resolve any such issue.)

We have purchased a number of fragile items on our many trips overseas and always thought we had protection if charging on a credit card. That’s not always so unless it’s AmEx, apparently.

I was equally surprised by the FedEx decision, especially since we held the damaged goods and were the only ones able to produce them for inspection.

I assume that the merchant filed the claim using the photos and recovered most of the losses. We did not have to return the damaged goods.

We have the new lantern in our house now — a very neat piece.

DENNY THOMAS

Wando, SC