Shipping a container from the UK

To update this post; I found a dealer who sold a container and allowed me to load in his yard at a cost of £200+vat and charged another £130 + vat to take the container to the port which was about a mile away. There was no alternative from what I could see. I used a shipping agent called Ascope who booked the passage and sorted out the documention so my container is making its way to Montevideo at a sedate 15 knots. I now have to wait for permission to enter Uruguay.

Hi

Glad to hear your container is on the way!

Do you have any indication of when Uruguay will open the border again?

Have a great day!

Marlene

Hi Marlene, I haven't heard yet. The last message I got from the consulate said that a few foreigners were being allowed in for work. I asked because I read somewhere that foreigners were allowed in for business or financial reasons. There's no guarantee, of course, that the agent at the consulate knew what they were talking about.

Thanks :-) Is that the Uruguay consulate?

Will you please let me know if you hear anything new?

Many thanks & regards
Marlene

That was the Uruguay consulate in London.

Thanks :-)

Did you get the news from expat today? Uruguay may be opening its borders for tourism 'in a few weeks'.

Hi

I saw that :-)  Hope it happens!

Hola Marlene.The nightmare continues. The Consulate in London is suggesting that Uruguay may be closed until March 2021. Meanwhile my container is at the Port of Montevideo incurring US$14 per day storage until I can get there to claim it.

Hola

Not good news at all :-(  I'm so sorry that you now have all this expense because of something totally out of your control.

Can't you get a special access permit? Or find someone in Uruguay who can claim the container on your behalf?

Hang in there!

I was being optimistic about the $14 per day storage. Hopefully, I will be paying that from this coming Friday. Meanwhile, I've been paying $70 per day while it's been sitting on the wharf. That's more $2,000 that I could have spent on household essentials in Colonia. If I ever find the root cause of this debacle I will issue a do's and don'ts on here in the hope that others don't make the same mistake. Some may say I should have shopped around but the fact is, the people I used were the only people I found after a lot of searching. The world of shipping must be a secret society.

Many if not most expats, especially after experiences such as yours, counsel wisely to bring as little as possible to your new home - that generally, unless you have things that you cannot possibly part with (and are willing to pay an arm and a leg, or as they say un ojo de la cara), bring only that which you can carry or easily transport in a few suitcases and do not ship anything via container.  As you have found there is not just the cost of shipping but port fees, storage fees, inspection fees and paperwork, customs fees and paperwork, transportation fees from the port to your inland destination - I may have missed some fees!

Several years ago I read that one could transport 5 tons in a 10' container for £5,000. On one of the occasions that Air France lost my luggage, I priced its value at £1500 so the container made sense. Last year I got a quote from Hamburg Sud for around £1,500 to ship a 20' so it was obviously the way to go. Unfortunately, shortly after receiving that quote, HS decided that it no longer wanted to deal with individuals which left me in the disastrous position that I found myself. If all had gone to plan, the 20' container load probably would have cost me £5K and left me with a secure galpon.

Incredibly, the container continues to give me grief. Although migrants are permitted to import their worldly goods free of the 60% duty, in order to get the goods released, it is necessary to pay a guarantee to customs, which is discharged when the migrant is granted residency. My residency was granted 19 months ago but that, in itself is not enough. My agent insists that I need to submit my cedula confirming legal residency. Such a cedula requires the submission of a partida and that was received in December 2022 but when I went to DNI for my new cedula, they found an error on the partida and could not issue the cedula. DGREC, the issuer of partidas seem not to want to replace the defective document despite their lawyer agreeing with my lawyer that the error was at DGREC. I am about to be invoiced for a third year's guarantee. Nobody at customs, DGREC or DNI answer my emails.

Sounds like a nightmare. The devil being in the details seems more prevalent in foreign locales. I'm curious about what it cost you to ship the container from the US, if you are open to sharing. Hoping to go through the process myself in a year or so. I shipped a container (POD) from Canada to the US in 2021, and it was a total nightmare...again, the devil being in the details. It seemed like every step was handled by yet a different person in a different state or Canada. Everyone passed the buck every time I called.  Fortunately I am good at being persistent and even threatening legal action if necessary, so eventually I got my belongings. I can only imagine trying to go through the process in a foreign language!

The cost of shipping the container, a 20' aka 1 teu was relatively low or would have been if everything had gone to plan. I was quoted a price from Hamburg Sud in the region of USD 600-700 from London. When I tried to book a space, they replied saying they no longer take bookings from individuals so I found a shipping agent who came back with an even lower price of USD 497 which was made up of an arcane retinue fees in several currencies. All looked good so I loaded the container in a yard about a mile from the dock and sent it on its way. Then the problems started. There was no seaway bill, so an emergency swb had to be raised. When the container arrived 6 weeks later, I was still in the UK because I couldn't get permission to enter Uruguay due to the Pandemic. I eventually found a customs agent through a friend of a friend who insisted that I needed to send various notarized and apostilled documents to him before he could get the container off the wharf and into a bonded area of the port. that delay cost USD2,440 in TCP

which is 'Time Charter Party'. Once in the bonded yard the cost of storage was a mere $14 per day. I often saw it forlornly sitting atop a stack of other containers because it took my agent 4 months to get it released after arriving in Uruguay. I also had to pay import duty on the container because it was mine and of course, the cost of transporting it to MVD. the final bill came to USD 4,861 + the USD14 per day for the year it was in bond. Several people I spoke to, including the Customs asked why I couldn't find a better agent. I suspect my agent was getting a kickback from the storage company.

So my advise is decide whether you want to use your own container. I bought mine because I wanted a secure galpon but you could rent one from the shipping company or you could simply rent space in a container which is called Less than Container Load (LCL). Find an agent at both ends to ensure that everything is covered from dispatch to release. That is Sea Way Bill issued, and container sealed then a customs agent at destination and a contractor to move the container or goods to your door.

This is why so many expats advise leaving everything behind and buying new "stuff" in your target country, or at worst bring only 6-7 suitcases with things you can't stand to part with and just pay a few extra $$ in baggage fees...unless you are trying to complicate your life with more stress and worries.

@OsageArcher The problem is finding goods of the same quality in Uruguay. Even if you can, the price if up to 3x the cost as it will be imported. If you live in an antique house, as I do, you can get well made, solid furniture at auction but it doesn't sit well in modern houses.

So when you read that an expat may import their personal and household effects 3 months before or 3 months after arrival, that is clearly not the case. It's likely that a more competent customs agent could clear one container without delay but my agent is still holding out for my full legal cedula which may only be issued if and when the DGREC see fit to correct their mistake and issue the document require to get the full cedula.

Wow. Thanks for detailing the pitfalls. It seems like the best thing to do would be get a cedula and THEN have a container shipped using the company's container. Would seem like the company would then help fight to get it released. Having a decent agent also seems imperative. I will definitely get recommendations before I attempt it.

And there's the rub. By the time you get your full legal cedula, you will have been in the country longer than your duty free import period.