Australian Food Shop Reviews 

Reply from Australian Food Shop

Nov 12, 2025

Hi Patrick, thanks for your review regarding your order back in June.

I've just looked back over our dialogue regarding this one, and can see the delivery was halted due to information legally required by the country for successful import not being provided. We were informed of this on 17 June, and after our correspondence with the recipient and DHL, the package was delivered in full 3 days later on 20 June, which was technically still within the expected time frame of your selected shipping option.

Additionally, the items in your order typically have 3-6 months of shelf-life from purchase, so there is no reason to assume any of these products would have been delivered anywhere close to expired.

As for the "extra fees", these are Customs fees charged by DHL, which go directly to them + the government of the country being sent to - we don't see a cent of this. As mentioned in our very first response to you, we make the possibility of Customs, Imports and Duties fees clear at Checkout, with a checkbox that requires ticking before an order can be completed. Despite this, I can understand that this still may have caught you off-guard, and apologise if that was the case.

With regard to our "exorbitant" pricing, your items had a markup of approx. 60% (compared to Aus supermarket pricing), which goes toward labour of our team, packaging and safety measures, Customer Service, and the many other costs associated with running another business like this. There really isn't much room to reduce pricing if we hope to continue trading and looking after the many Aussie expats who have come to rely on us, though we're always looking to reduce prices where we can, with 25% off many individual items on our store (this applied to 3 of the 4 products in your order) being one of the various ways we do this.

I'm not completely sure what you're insinuating with the "investigated for overcharging" comments, though for transparency's sake, this could only ever happen with a store like ours if our prices were higher at Checkout than main site, if we participated in any form of "systemic overcharging", or if we ran any kind of misleading sale, none of which are the case.

Finally, despite us going over and above to assist with this delivery, ultimately resulting in the goods arriving in a timely manner, some of your email correspondence regarding these matters is amongst the most vile, rude and abusive we've received in almost 10 years of trading. It's always worth considering in these instances that there is a human person on the other side, and we'd strongly suggest against using any small business in the future if you aren't able communicate more thoughtfully here.

Wishing you the best.

Cheers,
Guy | AFS Customer Service.

Reply from Australian Food Shop

Oct 27, 2025

Hi Kyle, thanks for your review.

We'd once again like to apologise for how pricey your order ended up being, and we're as frustrated as you are that the Canada Postal Strikes resulted in DHL's dearer service being the only one selectable to you at time of ordering.

As discussed on the phone with you a couple of weeks back, Customs fees can be unpredictable, and hence we have a disclaimer at Checkout with a compulsory checkbox needing to be ticked before the purchase is completed. I did offer to look at having DHL compensate some of this for you, but from memory you declined.

Additionally, I can confirm that all contents and values submitted for this order were done correctly, though I can understand if DHL's exorbitant fees charged may have suggested that we'd misstepped.

As AusPost > Canada is once again rolling, we're over the moon to be able to offer a much more economic postage option to Canada, and it goes without saying that if you ever did want to use our store again, postage is on us for your next order.

Our sincere regrets that this one didn't turn out better, and we remain available to answer any of your questions either via email or any of our social media channels.

Cheers,
Guy | AFS Customer Service.

Reply from Australian Food Shop

Updated Nov 12, 2025

EDIT:
Just to quickly update you here, we can confirm that a small number of orders were returned to us in a similar manner to this one, around the same time as yours, with Australia Post since confirming these to all be their error - here is an excerpt of one their replies :"We’ve identified an error with Electronic Advance Data (Customs Declaration) being transmitted to the destination country, which was caused by Australia Post".

I just went to refund the price difference of Express and Standard post for you, due to the extra time elapsed due to your first shipment coming back to us, however in this odd circumstance Express was actually the cheaper of the two. With this in mind, we can instead do a discount or throw in a complimentary sunscreen tube with your next order.

Thanks for your patience through all of this, and we were relieved to see the order get delivered after this unfortunate stuff-around.

ORIGINAL:
Hi Crystal, thanks for your review.

We only got this one back late last week, and with the Long Weekend happening we've only just had a chance to look into it. Confirming though that we're investigating with AusPost, as we've not once (from memory) had a sunscreen > The US order returned in 10 years of trading.

With the previous in mind, we are expecting AusPost to accept responsibility on an incorrect return, at which point we'll have your order right back on its way promptly. We'd have it re-sent already, however are wanting to avoid the same thing happening in case it's something we're missing.

Sorry for the stress this has caused you, and know that it's causing us stress too - we hate letting our customers down.

Feel free to reach out with any further concerns in the meantime.

Cheers,
Guy | AFS Customer Service.