Chinese Pirates
October 23, 2008 – We’re importing some expensive construction materials. The shipper’s forwarder doesn’t seem to have much familiarity with exporting to China. In China, you must be a licensed trading company in order to import or export commercial items. The shipper’s Shanghai side agent is not a trading company, nor does it regularly work with any. The Shanghai side agent had assumed that we’re a trading company (which we’re certainly not). Thus, when we found out that the agent is not a trading company, we realized there was a problem.
Unfortunately (but typically), the agent (or a couple of its employees) is using this as an opportunity to try to squeeze money from us. They found a trading company, but (surprise surprise) the quotation for the duties and the import services isn’t broken out. And it’s very high.
I’m 85% certain that the agent found a friendly trading company, and the two are colluding to overcharge us for the services. This is pretty much standard operating procedure here: They see we have a shipment on the water and they go for our throats.
