iPom

I've just had a company on the phone who have quoted us for transporting our goods to Australia.

For a start, we may get lumbered with a 'Container Decontamination Charge' which is where the container turns up and is in such a bad state, we have to pay for it to be decontaminated. If we pay £15 to the company, they'll bear the risk for that so we don't have to pay it. Why is the outside of the container my responsibility? Surely it's the shipping company's responsibility!?!

Then there's insurance at 3% which is fine. Then there's 5% tax on that 3% payable to the government. Good thing is there's no VAT.


Then I am told that the Ministry of Agriculture in Australia will want to inspect my goods, which will work out at around $150 for half an hour of work, which we will pay at the other end.


Now, is this all right, or am I being fed a line about container decontamination?

I realise our shoes and the one bike we are taking would be needed to be checked by the quarrantine Min of Ag people and that's fine, but $150 for them to open a box and look inside?

Is this all completely normal?

kris maynard

Hi

There have been a few people who have been charged at the Ozzy end for cleaning the container on the outside and cost a few hundred dollars apparantly its becoming more common , acouple of the quotes we had offererd the insurance about £15 to cover the cost IF we were unluck y enough!!

There is a thread somewhere by someone who had to have the container cleaned dont know how to add a link though Sorry!!

kris xx

h2oskineil

Just got our ACTUAL bill this week for checking our container which arrives 4th April..... AU$374.00.
If they find anything inside which they don't think is clean enough, there will be more charges and/or the cost of destroying the items... so get those bike wheels clean! :-)

Neil.

Mctree

I inquired about hidden costs when the shipping companies sent me the initial quote. Here's the reply from one of them:

The quarantine charges themselves are included in our quote, and therefore the only thing left out would be the Fumigation charges, irradiation fees, container washing fees and destruction fees, which of course do not apply to all shipments and only to those that are judged as necessary by the quarantine officers.

Regarding the excluded charges from the Agent in case they run upon any of the previously mentioned scenarios are as follows:

Difficult access -

Stairs - A$3.85 per 100 Lbs

Long carry - A$3.85 per 100 Lbs (per 30 meters)

Lift - A$165.00 per man per day.

Crane - A$880.00 (minimum)

Shuttle service - A$495.00 per day

Tradesmen - A$121.00 per hour (4 hour minimum)

I was told I would probably be looking at around (a maximum of) A$1000 charge at the Australia end.

helen/andy

I plan to power wash all shoes and bikes ect THEN have been advised to wipe everything with Jeyes Fluid,cos it smells really strong of disinfectant,IT DOES smell horrid but im told (by a shipping company) that the Aussies are less likely to inspect all the stuff too much or decontaminate your container.Helen

Bert'n'Stella

The quarantine charge is the standard extra on every shipment. As far as I know it is never included in the shipping cost but it should be advised to you that it exists and you will have to pay it in Oz. Ours was about $250 for about 400 cubic feet (half a 20ft container I think).

With container cleaning, we used Excess Baggage and asked them about this before signing up. They take full cost of that if it comes to it. I think he said about £10 is charged on every shipment, and this money is used to pay for container cleaning, which doesn't happen very often.

So all up I think we paid about £2k for the shipment, 3% insurance (I think other companies do insurance which may be cheaper - if you do a search on the forum there are threads on it) and the inspection cost. We had a bike, golf clubs, hiking boots, tools etc which we cleaned, and none of these needed cleaning when inspected. Of our 80 boxes about 20 were opened and checked at inspection. This was at Brisbane port.

Stella

iPom

Thank you stella... great informative post.

moneypenny20

The only extra charge we had was about $374 AQIS fees this end. Don't get the insurance through the shipping company. Most of them use Letton Percival and charge you 3%. Go direct to Letton and you get charged 1.5% same cover.

Have heard mention of this decontamination thing on here, but no one mentioned it to us when shipping and certainly didn't get charged for it.

ClareW

We pressure washed anything that had been outside and labelled those items to say they'd been cleaned. We also attached notes to anything that had been treated (eg: ornamental wooden giraffe from South Africa which we had treated for woodworm) listing when we had treated it and what with. It takes a little while to cover everything but really worth it as customs didn't seize anything.

ex-GLOS

If I remember correctly - JaneandJim had to pay to have their container cleaned. We had to pay storage at the docks because they took so long to move the goods. They certainly have all the bargaining power because they have your stuff.

Bert'n'Stella

Funny thing is that we asked about container cleaning after seeing someone on expats posting they had been charged for it. Excess Baggage manager said they decided to include the surcharge on each shipment to pay for cleaning, based on what they read on expats! So they access the forum also.... not sure about other companies tho.

S