This morning, I went to the DHL office, WWW Express,to ship my brother’s documents to Kuwait. When I entered their office along Lacson St., a female staff was still assisting a customer. The seats were empty and there were no other persons next in line but me.
That would be good. It means it will be quick to finish my transaction.
I waited for my turn behind the old lady when something written on a cardboard caught my attention.
“Government Fee………P100 /document”
I reread from the top to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. ”DFA Authentication” was written in bold on top of this notice. And there were the types of documents like NSO Birth Certificate, NSO Marriage Certificate, etc. What got my curiosity was the following:
Government Fee……….P100/document
Freight ……………………P265
VAT………………………..12%
You may wonder, “what’s the big deal about it?”
Before working in Kuwait, documents like NSO copy of birth certificate or certified true copy of PRC ID requires authentication from DFA, which is commonly called red ribbon. I haven’t processed for DFA authentication before so I have no idea about it.
I was surprised to learn that the fee was just less than Php 500 if you processed it through DHL and delivered to your local address. I processed the authentication through a travel agency and the fee was a whopping Php 2500/document for authentication and Php 3300/document for stamping in Kuwait Embassy! And that was the biggest wow I cried inside my head.
Pano was right to suggest processing in DHL. He was able to process for the red ribbon before through DHL. Only that DHL moved to a new location and I didn’t know their new address.
I shouldn’t feel guilty because it was my brother’s idea to have it processed through a travel agency recommended by his friend. I didn’t insist so as not to cause more problems and inconvenience.
But I felt bad for him and his wife on spending a lot for four documents. He could have saved more than Php 10,000 including the stamping. Wow! (again!)
Had we searched for the new DHL office, we could have saved a lot of money.
Too late. All it needed was to spend on jeepney fares to save Php 10,000.
*Special thanks to my friend Darl for the Hello Kitty coin bank photo used in this post.
