Never use DHL. We sent 2 boxes of our personal stuff from the UK. It took about 2 weeks then they phoned to say it was in Bangkok. After a week it hadn't been delivered, they said they wanted to see my passport. And they were charging 200 baht tax a day for storage (backdated, of course) We went up to Bangkok to sign paperwork, we had an insurance value of 750 pounds declared to DHL. DHL staff then said that we had to pay 750 pounds in import tax. As the items were just household stuff I told them no way and they could keep our stuff. They insisted so we demanded to see the Customs head. A DHL girl meekly accompanied us, and after seeing our passports and visas the Head of Customs told us "no fee" and also told DHL to stop wasting her time. We weren't allowed to take our goods as DHL "had to deliver ". Another day's storage!! It arrived the next day, the driver put his hand out and we paid the bill exactly to the satang. When he looked for a tip, I told him to try and find a job with a decent company.

Awesome tip!

I buy me 2 machine gun / soft gun in bkk the day before i go home. I trust the dealer and let him handle the postage with a motorcycle taxi. He also claim to have a brother in the post office so i think this was working great. I have to wait for taxi to return and i walk around in Fortune to looking at things. 3 hours later he have not return, and i thinking fu... i am stupid again to trust people. But later i get my bill from post office and i was relax.The reason i send it by mail was that i dont want to carry this to the airport and if it is any problem i would face it when i go to my post office / custom at home.
I go home and waiting and looking everyday in the mail box but no pick up paper arrived to me.
After some weeks i check with post office and pack tracing on internett, the gun was send from local post office bkk to the big distrubution center in bkk and there every track stop. I cal to the post in bkk and they say it was return to local post office. I get number to that post office and i talk with a man who find the gun. I speak a litle bit of thai so he understand who i was and what i looking for. He say the gun was stop bec. it was "mai Dee" or not good. I told him this is not really gun and custom in my country allow this as a legal item. I also get a friend of me who is thai to talk with him when it get to complicated. We agree that he would send it by surface mail that monday. I call him wednesday and ask if he have send it and he confirm. I was not sure so i cal a friend in bkk to get ready to go to the post office. I call back to him and sudently he have the gun at the post office and then i told him someone comming to pick it up. Then he explain that someone was allready picking it up ? who could pick up my stuff without any paper ? I say my friend is comming and when she arrived the gun was in the post office. One time i call i listen the girl who take the phone handed it over to the man and she say "is the gun". So i think its get a litle bit hot for him now. My friend get the gun and i ask if she get 3600 bath in return bec. that was the freight by air.
No she have to get that from the shop and that i have to send the bill and then she get money.
So now the gun is in my hand in her appartment. They think this farrang go home and never could not do anything about this bec he far away. I also send other things from post office in thailand but i do the work by my self and this always arrive to my home. So to trust people is not easy and i should have learn after so many trips to thailand. I also was ripp of by fish restaurant 3-4000 bath for bad rice and fish. But now i speak thai and things have change about taxi and tuk tuk who try take me to place of interest.

The Thai Customs forced me to shut down my business and lay off employes.
I was tired of paying the Thai Mafia to get me goods.
Had to pay cash without receipts!

oh yeah i got those scams truly in tho place in bankok..oh yes

also, I would not reccomend UPS for sending important papers quickly

I had some sent to me in sakon nakon by ups red lable international.

it took 8 days to get them, seems once ups got them to bkk they put them in regular thai post. \

we were lucky to receive them at all.

the delay caused a major problem

Note: There is a customs clearance tariff book. The most common scam is that they try to put your import in another group with higher tax. For example, polyester capacitors (electronics parts) 3% tax, but polyester (a chemical) has 33% tax on it.

Always go down there to fight.

Using UPS/DHL doesn't help. They will help you clear customs, but they still forward the customs fee to you. I was once asked to pay 18,000 Baht for 5 small LCD screens like those used on 99 Baht pocket calculators. In this case, I simply abandoned the shipment, by telling DHL that I never ordered anything from the supplier, and didn't know what was in the box. The supplier was not very happy.

DHL from Bangkok to Europe is a nightmare.
I sent myself some incense and clothe one time, total value was about 80 € and the box was 25kg, i paid 5000 baht to ship it and DHL made it such a way with custom that i had to pay over 180 € taxes to get my box!!!

It's systemic in Thailand (ironically, never had that problem living in Indonesia) -- I've had the same problems with DHL, UPS, and FedEx. If you want to ship something here, the best recommendation I have is to gamble and declare the item(s) as having no value. The obvious downside with going that route is that if they mysteriously disappear, since it was 'valueless', you're out the actual value too. Welcome to Thailand!

@Mark, what about registering the item, thats what I do?

Hi, can anyone recommend a good ping pong show without getting scammed?