Today was taken up with nonsense at work regarding a shipment from the UK that's refusing to be settled. We've been trying to pick it up since last Friday but things keep happening -- clearance was late, wrong papers sent, shipment wasn't transferred to the right truck and on and on. So much of today was trying to find a way to get it finished. Didn't work. I'll be back on it, tomorrow.
A lot of the trouble stems from simple refusal to communicate. The airline says the shipment's on its way...but exactly; we had no room so removed it and will have it on its way, tomorrow, but won't bother updating our system to let you know until the flight you think it's on arrives and it's not there. It takes a phone call to ask about only to be given a shrug and a half-hearted Sorry.
The customs broker won't even try to do a wheels-up clearance (where soon as the plane takes off clearance is begun) until they can verify the freight is on the plane...but then even after it has arrived in the US and is being transferred to the proper facility, they don't check so don't start the clearance until it's nearly 4pm on a Friday before a holiday weekend.
Then the trucker says they didn't send over the Customs release which tells them who can pick up the freight, which they were sent, but because the company picking up the freight doesn't have a copy with them it doesn't matter...and then, after hours of back and forth, they say it's the wrong form, anyway. After the broker is closed. So you're stuck another day.
And this is not unusual, lately. Not the first time it's happened, even in December. It's like everyone's regressing from what they used to know about this crap and having to relearn everything from scratch. I'm not the sharpest guy in the world when it comes to import/export, but even I know to take the right paperwork with me and call if there's an issue the moment it happens, not 2 days later. It's insane.
So little got done on APoS. Just working through a list of the names involved...and assigning last names to some people who only had first ones...and honing the outline a bit with new information. Didn't even get any reading done. I did take a walk to the grocery store and back, and picked up a salad en route.
So healthy of me.
A lot of the trouble stems from simple refusal to communicate. The airline says the shipment's on its way...but exactly; we had no room so removed it and will have it on its way, tomorrow, but won't bother updating our system to let you know until the flight you think it's on arrives and it's not there. It takes a phone call to ask about only to be given a shrug and a half-hearted Sorry.
The customs broker won't even try to do a wheels-up clearance (where soon as the plane takes off clearance is begun) until they can verify the freight is on the plane...but then even after it has arrived in the US and is being transferred to the proper facility, they don't check so don't start the clearance until it's nearly 4pm on a Friday before a holiday weekend.
Then the trucker says they didn't send over the Customs release which tells them who can pick up the freight, which they were sent, but because the company picking up the freight doesn't have a copy with them it doesn't matter...and then, after hours of back and forth, they say it's the wrong form, anyway. After the broker is closed. So you're stuck another day.
And this is not unusual, lately. Not the first time it's happened, even in December. It's like everyone's regressing from what they used to know about this crap and having to relearn everything from scratch. I'm not the sharpest guy in the world when it comes to import/export, but even I know to take the right paperwork with me and call if there's an issue the moment it happens, not 2 days later. It's insane.
So little got done on APoS. Just working through a list of the names involved...and assigning last names to some people who only had first ones...and honing the outline a bit with new information. Didn't even get any reading done. I did take a walk to the grocery store and back, and picked up a salad en route.
So healthy of me.
2 comments:
American customs are a pain in the backside, not that UK is better anyway. But it also depends who is the airline you working with and the handling agent in the UK that checks the freight.
True, that...and it doesn't help when the people handling the clearance don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.
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