I intended to move to France at the beginning of this year. Accordingly, I arranged with international Shipping Solutions to have my personal effects picked up and delivered to my French address. I paid the invoice in full. The pickup was done at the beginning of March.
About a month later I received an email saying that because of a legal dispute between Ace and ISS, Ace would not release my goods for shipment, but not to worry every thing would be arranged.
At this point I started to hear from Dolphin Shipping who apparently had taken over ISS that everything was under control and my goods would shortly be in France.
Duriing May and June I had several emails from both Dolphin and ISS saying which ship my goods were on and giving various dates of arrival. All of these proved false.
Eventually it transpired that the shipment was in Antwerp awaiting transport to Paris. It apparently arrived in Paris about the first of September. Since then I have heard nothing from either company. I have emailed both Katherine Kaiser and Marty McKenzie of Dolphin Shipping several times during the past month but received no reply. I have rung them on their international phone numbers and received the information that the numbers (including the contact numbers given on their website) have been disconnected. My son in the US has tried to telephone them (their freephone numbers are working) only to be connected to Katherine's voicemail which goes unanswered and has emailed them to which they are also non-responding.
In one of the last emails received from Dolphin, they assured me that they were working with their Paris agent whose name they gave me and that my goods woulod be shipped soon. I contacted the company named who told me that the total extent of their contact with Dolphin was a letter requesting that the goods be shipped and promising payment at some later time. They had replied that they would require prepayment before shipping. This, I was told, was the full extent of their contact with Dolphin. They also gave me the name of the company currently holding my goods. I contacted this company to be informed that they had my goods, but that unless somrthing was done immediately, there would be difficulties with customs because they had had them so long.
At this point, both Dolphin and ISS apparently decided to have nothing more to do with me and to let my shipment rot in some French warehouse, because they remained incommunicado, both to me and their so-called agent in France leaving us to cope as best we could.
That's the state of play at the moment. It looks as though I am going to have to pay the French company who currently hold my goods almost as much as my original bill from International Shipping Solutions.
Walter
Saint Amant de Bonnieure
France
0 comments