Double trouble

A ship agent in Central America made two mistakes in relation to cargo on a ship coming into port which led to two customs fines.

The first error was that the agent misinformed the customer about the time limits for making a customs declaration. This led to a fine being imposed for late declaration.

The second error was that the agency employee in charge of entering the tariff codes typed an incorrect code, resulting in another custom fine of 20% of the taxes.

The customer claimed the amounts of the fines plus the costs of demurrage and storage for an additional week sorting out the problems before they could retrieve the cargo from the terminal.

ITIC reimbursed a total of US$ 25,243 and the ship agent arranged further training for their staff.