From Casablanca, Morocco to Houston, United States - April, 2010

We first contacted ACX and Mehedi 4 weeks before we wanted to air freight our bike. We were shown into an nice (for Morocco) air conditioned office. Mehedi spoke good English, was well dressed, polite and very efficient. We asked him for a quote for our bike and were given ""an exact"" amount of 1032 Euros. We asked him for the cost of crating the bike and received ""an exact"" quote of 50 Euros.

We left for our tour of Morocco on our bike and Mehadi promised to send a confirmation email that would confirm our booking, air way bill etc.

To cut a long story short we had to contact Mehadi many, many times via telephone before we eventually received an email with incorrect flight dates. More telephone calls eventually got us an email with an airway bill number and the correct flight dates (BUT NO COST/QUOTE)

3 days before the bike was due to fly we showed up at the ACX office to hand over our bike. After he collected our details Mehadi calmly told us that the cost of the air freight would be 2300 Euros plus 200 Euros for crating. When we expressed our disbelief at the new price he merely shrugged, smiled and said that that was the cost. Further questions regarding his previous ""exact quote"" from our previous visit resulted in his boss getting angry and telling us to ""take it or leave it"", ""cash only"".

After ""negotiating"" ACX graciously lowered there price by a couple of hundred Euros and gave us a 50% discount on crating - which was still double the original ""exact quote"".

Its so obviously a scam. I've personally seen this in other parts of the world (Asia). The original quote is a sucker quote and you wont find the real price until its either too late or too difficult for you to go elsewhere. Don't know what you can do to avoid this one. If you ask for a written quote they will have a pre-prepared, credible sounding excuse for not giving you one.

The only silver lining is that once you fork over the cash they did provide a good service and took care of our bike.

PS These guys are agents for Air France