Kirchtag Umbrellas

Any info you have on them?

Just pulled the trigger on one after seeing yours.

Their website is pretty decent (and has the added bonus of some amusing mistranslations should you run it through google, which I will leave you to find): http://www.kirchtag.com/home.html

 

An internet search also reveals a brief mention of the company & a look inside its workshop here: http://www.neverstoptraveling.com/my-secret-salzburg-tour

 

Those of you who dig all the individual artisanal schtick will value this quote :

 

 

No idea if the ones sold elsewhere are made the same way, or some kind of branding deal.

Oh, I have googled a lot of it.

 

I'm not usually one to go down the Freudian slip/free association psychoanalytic road, so it pains me to admit I initially read this as:

Maybe you are such a good psychatrist that you have actually become psychic!

Fixed.

Ok, so here is the story. I ordered one of these guys in February. They said it was take approximately 2 weeks to make and then they would ship. About 3-4 weeks went by and they said they shipped it on March 8 and sometimes with customs and such it can take 4-6 weeks. Six weeks later I informed them I still hadn't received it and I asked if they had a tracking number. They sent me the tracking number and it said it was at a sorting facility and had been marked unclaimed and was being sent back to Germany. WTF!?!? I called the post office, they said there is nothing they can do and they don't give phone numbers to sorting facilities so I can't even tell them to reship it. I filed an investigation on the post office website and they said there is nothing they can do and only the shipper can launch a formal investigation, but by that time it will already be back in Germany. I emailed Kirchtag to let them know, but I fear the issue will be lost in translation and they are just going to mysteriously receive this unopened umbrella package that is already paid for. I'm royally pissed at the post office and I don't know what to do.

Side story, I sold an old umbrella, which this was to replace. I shipped it about 3-4 miles away and it never got there. There are two constants here, umbrellas and the post office. This is what I get for opening them up inside before I walk out the door...

It is ridiculous. I should have just bought the damn thing at Rain or Shine for full price. All this hassle has been worth it.

 

You thought you'd make a big splash, but in the end all your hopes just washed away.

 

Still, dry up and just go with the flow from now on.

 

 

In my - admittedly limited & small-scale - experience, couriers are the worst. Royal Mail (with USPS at the other end) can sometimes be delayed by customs for a brief but unpredictable duration, but it gets through in the end. With couriers, they not only charge more for shipping, but have an annoying tendency to be more meticulous in terms of charging duties (and incorrectly), and then charging for storage. I'm sure it's a good revenue stream...

+1. I bought a watch from overseas quite a few years ago and it was shipped via FedEx (I think).

Anyway, it was over the customs limit for Australia and so I got a call from FedEx to let me know that I had a pay a customs fee.

Similar to your experience, when I finally received the watch and looked at the invoice, more than half of the additional cost - which was considerable - was taken up by a "processing fee" levied by the courier company for forwarding on my customs fee payment to the government!

I'm looking forward to see what happens with my fees...