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Shipping Company Ransoming my Shipment: Another Rant
randvegeta
Member, Host Rep
I'm in a mood, so here is another rant. Sorry everyone!
Okay so in February I decided to send a pallet from Hong Kong to Lithuania filled with 2U server chassis. It's not all that valuable, 2U chassis are cheap in China but seem to cost in excess of 100EUR in Europe. Besides, I had a few dozen laying around that I wasn't using.
So the idea was save a few thousand EUR and ship via sea. Found a shipping company in HK to handle it and paid about US$500 to ship my pallet. I understood this amount to be a door-door cost and all documentation as there was a considerable charge for 'documents fees'.
It arrives in Lithuania at the end of May. Talk about snail mail! A company called Baltic Console Line somehow managed to take possession of the goods and says that there are local charges due. The charges are for things like, unloading the ship and MORE documents charges, and storage. They ask for $600 for their services.
I contact the shipping company in HK who says that I only paid for ocean freight and HK related charges and that there are additional charges at the destination. I was pretty angry at this point because there was no mention of this when I paid them back in February. The HK company said it was standard practice for import/exporters (I am not in this business). Eventually they agree to take some responsibility for the misunderstanding and agreed to pay 50% of the local (LT) charges.
I should point out that the LT charges is a complete rip-off considering its basically the same work (but in reverse) that was done in HK, but does not include ocean freight, and they still charged $100 more! It's seems like a clear scam to me.
Any way, I figure that the trouble to fight was going to cost me more than the $300 difference I had to pay so I just paid and hoped that would be the end of it.
It is now mid August and I still haven't received the shipment. After paying, they waited a whole month before asking for additional information like my EORI number and an invoice with proof of payment for the goods. They even ask for things like CE certificates. I don' have any of these things and they aren't even a requirement.
And now, they are demanding an extra $1,000 in 'storage' fees for the last 2 months, even though they had already been paid their $600 (+$100 for customs clearance) back in June and have caused their own delays. And that's where we are today.
This vexes me. I'm terribly vexed...
Comments
Welcome to ocean shipments, it is just a lot of charges as you said, too much hassle.
Friends don't let friends ship something via overseas pallet without large amount of alcohol.
Ocean shipments? Typical to get fucked, air is still the best actually
You just defeated me in ranting, two threads wow. Time to use the methods in your unwinding thread?
hehe, yea, you don't ship FOB unless you know how it works. What you see here is the default shipping, though they did communicate it bad (out of interest, in english or chinese?).
Easier to ship to NL also and have eg. GLS forward it as normal freight on road - No weird language or post-soviet bureaucrazy plus they ship so much crap each day that no one has much interest in your pallet.
Im sure I watched a documentary about shipping, and Lithuania is a bitch to get to. As stated by @william said above, it would have been better to go via NL. Is there not a Trans Siberian rail line you can use from china to ex-soviet countries?
It probably also for that reason took that long - LT customs are not yet much involved even, they had to wait for a ship to go there from HK/China....
NL (RTD, AMS), Hamburg (DE) and other big target ports in EU leave like daily and take 10-14 days or so from what i know.
You can ship by train (and in fact even ride yourself) from EU to China (or further to even North Korea) and reverse, but i doubt it is cheaper at all - That seems to be more of a historical and "people" train line (eg. trains start in Moscow, which logistically makes no sense).
I thought I was clever a few years back and ordered a nice big MAME console from China. Cost me about $750 for the machine and the Chinese end of the Transport and Shipping. Bu the time I got it Id paid that much again at the Sydney end. The Daily Rate for storage here of the single unit was about $150. Next time Ill pay someone here $1200 and be done with it.
Are you advocating the murder of prostitutes?
No. Delete away some prod servers already :P
You got scamm by that hk shipping company, not lithuania company. You playing $500 FOB to port on lithuania,that's it. From ship to destination up to you how to processed. You got bill for extra storage fee because you did't give information how to transport goods..
You need to hire freight forwarder or that baltic something company
HK companies (and China, too) will say it is door to door, but it is a lie. It really is FOB or just payed until your port. That is indeed sad, right?
i import many things from all the world. You must to know this :
1) every country have some laws for import (tax etc etc)
2) if you pass for exemple in romania for 50$ import you need to have EORI code (normaly is simple to obtain from your custom , eaven personal number , no need company)
3 ) if your palet is not moved from the custom in 5 days you need to pay for the deposit .
Sorry if you pass this but you should ask for a "frontiere agent" or "custom agent" how to proceed. If you are not in hunrry you can lost the package or you will need to pay many $$$
The EU has unified import policies for 95% of the codes, but yes an EORI number AND knowing the code of what you import make things easier - A trusted shipper that is unlikely to raise customs suspicious questions (eg. not North Korean Star or Colombian Deliveries Inc. but rather something EU based) is also good.
Best here is likely a customs agent that does it for you - the Chinese seller should have the import ID for cases also but it seems this was correctly applied (you don't seem to have paid much tax, if any, as usual for most computer parts from China at this time - most other things have between 0% and 150% (Chinese steel & bicycles, anti price dumping EU charge)).
you should have appointed a forwarding agency in Lithuania with contacts in HK instead of making arrangements yourself. They would have provided information on all requirements, ie. certification, import permits, invoice formats, CIF rates, etc.
charges claimed are standard for LCL shipments, storage charges cost a bomb all over the world
@randvegeta so how much are rackmount cases in China?
Yea, how much? And how much U?
If the price is right i'll gladly handle the import of them for you
I bet that you did that by accident
Depends. Im importing mostly 2U chassis. I did not buy them recently but can get them in China new for between 30 and 50 EUR depending on how deep it is and how good the fans are.
Most of the chassis I have shipped are 30EUR or so in value. But if you order large qty from manufacturer in China, im sure you can get a better price.
Im shipping 30 chassis and expected a 450 EUR shipping fee + tax. So a total of around 1700 EUR. If buying in europe i would fully expect to pay in excess of 3000 EUR.
The extra 1300 being demanded by BCLine would negate the savings and I will refuse to pay. Instead I will probably persue the HK company in small claims court unless they can sort it out.
no
EORI no. http://images.fedex.com/international/pdf/regulatory-alerts/RegAlert13-0012-EORI-Use-In-EU.pdf and good luck with your small claims case
I'm an HK citizen and resident. EORI numbers are for legal EU entities. Shipment is in my name. Never had this problem with shipping anything before to the EU.
@randvegeta: Whatever you want to do, act fast as @cociu said, and check what you are allowed to do. According to your description of the facts, your pallet is racking fees right now. You may not be able to just abandon your shipment without incurring in extra costs and liabilities; depending on what you signed and what your local law says, BCLine may try to collect the debt by force or the customs may impose fines. They probably got the idea that you are the one that started the mess by selecting the wrong shipment company in HK and then neglecting to prepare the required papers - they really didn't ask nothing more than the ordinary, and you coud have used google or the mighty powerful LowEndHelpdesk to know it all beforehand.
;-) By the way, LowEndHelpdesk, what is the cheapest way today to import in EU from the USA a pallet with around 180Kg of used / 2nd hand electronic equipment (vintage audio gears etc) ?
@pcan,
We were told it was end-to-end delivery. The responsibility will ultimately fall on the shipper in HK. We will pursue them for costs and losses if necessary.
The LT company have outrageous charges. $600 to unload a ship? Unreasonable. The extra $1,000 they are demanding is not going to be paid. I will happily abandon the cargo and they can come try and collect on me if they like.
I have no contract with BCLine. The agreement I have is with the shipper. BCLine have created their own delays. For example, between paying the extra $300, and them asking for further documentation, they waited a whole month. So they want to charge extortionate amounts of money for storage per day, but they are themselves causing the delay.
The cargo value is only about $1,000, most of which was just sitting in my own warehouse in HK for years! At this point I'm content to let them store it for as long as they see fit. I'll get my money back from the shipper in small claims court.
Assuming whatever jurisdiction the shipper resides in even has a small claims court equivalent, the cost of travelling there and presenting a case you might not even win is going to far outstrip anything you get back. Assuming a win, you will then have to somehow get the shipper to actually pay the claim.
This is the hardest part in small claims court.
Yeah, and to be honest I doubt there is a chance in hell it could be won. All the shipper has to do is present a contract for FOB shipping. At that point, I would think the case is closed.
it's... probably not that easy, courts in HK are doing shipping stuff since many years.
It's not, at least not if the company is also based in HK - you can get the judgement and execution order in a week timespan and have it actually executed in less than a month (as you can go and ask them for money/goods, but only police can force them to hand over anything).
I'm sure they have, but the information presented so far seems fairly clear. The OP signed a contact without understanding what FOB means. What is there to argue (assuming FOB terms are on the signed contract)?
This is the hard part. I doubt recovering a few hundred dollars from a small claims lawsuit for a foreigner is high on the priority list for the HK police.
There's the ideal world . . . then there's the real world. At the end of the day, I can see the claims process costing more than the claim itself.
Well, first of all, I do not believe OP has a chance of winning his case.
Secondly, it's going to cost more than what he could win.
Thirdly, if by any Godly chance he does win, he's going to have a hell of time collecting the money. Hell, he may have to bribe to get them going. lolz.
@Deank and @Microlinux
I am not a foreigner in HK. Shipper is in HK and my company is in HK. There is no 'contract' per se. There are email records, invoices and payments all of which point towards an end-to-end delivery. Full delivery services is one of the services they offer as advertised on their site.
Small claims should be fait straight forward and cheap to proceed with and our lawyer seems to think its a pretty simple case.