When shipping air freight to Middle East, what’s the biggest risk? It’s when your freight forwarder also runs an Amazon business. They have their own Amazon department. For cross-border sellers who ship with them, they become the best product research tool! They know exactly how much stock you’re moving, which products sell best, how many shipments you send each month, and most importantly, who your target customers are. Isn’t that the perfect product research data? Then these forwarders use their own operations team to just take that data and use it. Whether it’s copying your listings or selling similar products, you have no way to guard against it.

Let me also tell you about other pitfalls with air freight to Middle East.

Some forwarders will charge you for air freight but put your cargo on a fast ship, or charge for a fast ship but put it on a slow ship, just to pocket the difference. That’s one of the worst tricks. Lately, with the heatwaves, floods, strikes, and unrest, they have plenty of excuses. They’ll just pick any excuse: “Oh, it’s delayed because of the high heat!” “There’s unrest!” “There’s a strike!” They always have something to say.

What’s the second pitfall?

Freight forwarders who lack expertise, are irresponsible, and unprofessional. Some of them try to make higher profits by secretly mixing sensitive goods with regular cargo, shipping things they shouldn’t. The customs brokers they use are also unprofessional—often just middlemen. If nothing goes wrong, you’re lucky. But if there’s an issue, the forwarder will just blame it on a sudden change in customs policy. Well, customs usually gives us a chance to fix things. If you missed a label, you can go ahead and label it. You pay a little extra for the transit warehouse, and customs clears it.

But unprofessional forwarders, or those middlemen, will just say, “Sorry, your goods need to be returned or destroyed, and you need to pay us more.” They don’t take responsibility or provide service, leaving you speechless. When customs has an issue—honestly, you’re just an intermediary service—if you seriously work to solve the problem, we understand.

So, what should you look for in a freight forwarder?

First, they need to have solid expertise. Second, they need to be willing to take responsibility. When problems come up, they step up. Whether they offer to compensate based on the original cargo value, or 41kg compensation, or $100 per carton, as long as they are willing to make it right, that’s what matters. But there are many who say, “I’ll make it up on your next shipment,” or “I’ll give you a 50-cent discount.” If you didn’t even handle my first shipment properly, why would I trust you with my second?

It’s one trap after another, each link in the chain connected. At every step, the shipper is the most vulnerable. Of course, there are good freight forwarders out there—ones who take responsibility. Take our company, DL Logistics, for example. Last year, a batch of air freight to Middle East from Guangzhou got soaked in the warehouse. By the book, it wasn’t our fault. But we still proactively compensated the customer. That’s what a reliable freight forwarder does.

Because we understand: what shippers want is service and peace of mind. If we can provide that, they will come back to us. A long-term business is the real business. We treat freight forwarding as a lifelong career. Our approach is different from 90% of the forwarders out there. And because of that mindset, we now have nearly 100 employees, and we bought the entire 8th floor of Rongde Times Square Block B in Longgang District outright. So if you’re shipping air freight to Middle East, wouldn’t you feel at ease choosing a forwarder like us?