Sqchumacher Cargo
gardena,#2UPDATE Employee
Thu, November 29, 2012
To answer this correctly, while acknowledging the pain and loss of money that our client mentions in her complaint, the delays and nature of why the shipment never happened was an accumulation of certain factors. We do ship to American Samoa,
we ship to over 80 destinations worldwide and 90% of our service is based on consolidation shipping. This is putting multiple vehicles inside one 40' container. This allows us to offer the most competitive way to ship your vehicle from the US to its final destination. Some destinations may take longer to book enough cargo to fill the container and then in turn, ship from the US.
At the time, we did have vehicles booked and each shipment is always in various stages of being "ready to ship". This means us waiting on correct documents, delivery of the vehicle or import permits, depending on the port of destination.
Unfortunately, once our client booked, it did take longer than expected to book more cargo and make the ones we had booked in the system, "ready to ship and we can only load once we have sufficient cargo to make the whole process viable. This is why the rates are competitive and appealing to our clients. The reason one person handles a specific file, is because some people handle certain regions of the globe within our company. It has no reflection on their individual capacity to fulfill the process and complete the file. We ship from five ports in the US and have over 50 staff in all areas making sure we complete files with our clients ASAP so we can move cars on the water.
To add insult to injury, in late August we finally had a booking made as follows;
Vessel: Kota Juta
Voyage: 235
Departure from US: 9/6/12
Arrival in Samoa: 10/23/12,
But unbeknownst to us, the Govt agency in Samoa changed the rules on the age of vehicles that are allowed into the country which made the shipping of this vehicle impossible. We had no option but to tell our clients that we could not ship as requested due to legal technicalities and the vehicles had to be returned to their original address here in the US. The rules on shipping vehicles into many countries change from time to time and unfortunately this information comes to us from indirect sources. We strive to keep abreast of all laws and regulations on all destination ports as best we can.
Damien Shields- Sales Manager at Schumacher Cargo