Take a lot of care when contracting a moving company. They could provide you a good impression and present a reasonable quotation, but easily they can put you in a terrible situation as Omega Shipping and his partner Navtrans Global Relocation did.
My first mistake was that after many attempts, Mr. Aviani never provide me with a schedule for the overall process. I thought that would not be an issue, since I would follow-up the process quite insistently as I did, my mistake!
As scheduled, the container left Miami by the end of December, and arrived Bremerhaven (Germany) by January 04. All the paperwork was delivered as requested, that means by the end of December, or prior to the arrival of the container. My wife was calling Navtrans almost every other day, and they were never sure about our process. Finally on January 14, they told us that they need a different paper. The paper was provided on January 19, and finally they set the delivery for February 01, Monday.
Our nightmare started on January 31, Sunday at 6:00pm when Mr. Benjamin Beger, employee of Navtrans sent us an invoice with 25 days demurrage cost and administration fees, totalizing EURO 2,311 never before discussed, explained or agreed.
On the following day, Feb. 01, Mr. Beger gaves us a call at 8:00am saying that the delivery of our goods would start after the CASH payment of the invoice. We tried to explain that since he never told us about that expense we were not prepared to pay anything else than the agreed amount as discussed on the previous week. The answer was: "or you go to the bank right now and get the money, or the container will leave and you will have to pay much more than what I am charging you now. I know customers like you that will never pay the invoice if I deliver the goods." So after around two hours trying to explain to Mr. Beger that those charges and the way he was trying to get the money from us was not acceptable, and due to the time difference Mr. Aviani could not be contacted, we had no other option to go to the bank and totally against our willingness we delivered the money.
After more than one month exchanging emails with Navtrans General Manager, Mr. Savo Radosavovic he never explained what happened from January 04 until January 14 when they asked us for the new paper and why he was charging for administrative fee that was not in the contract. We contacted their logistic provider in Bremerhaven and our process never arrived there prior to January 20, and they took 1 day to process it. We also contacted German customs, and the process was there for 1 day as well, so why do I have to pay for 25 days demurrage?
Mr. Aviani answer was, "I am sorry that it happened to you but I can not do anything" - believe or not, as simple as this.
I am now looking for a lawyer to talk to these people, since these companies can not behave like this where the customer is penalized with no chance to influence or prevent such a situation.
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