Shipping Security, Insurance and Paperwork

Hello again

Amongst my emails in the last few days were a few from readers of this blog about shipping. Two of them are quite worrying.

In a nutshell, both readers used a local shipping company in Cyprus to return their personal possessions to the UK. They contacted the company to find out why their goods have not arrived. Apparently this company were unhelpful - and don’t appear to even know where their consignments are.

Worst of all, these trusting customers say they handed over cash and were given no paperwork.

OK. There are a few burning questions here. First and foremost, I have only one side of the story. But why wasn’t any paperwork issued if they were a “reputable” company? More importantly, what about the inventory and insurance documents? And the most worrying thing of all – did the goods actually get shipped or have they “gone elsewhere?” Who knows? Your guess is as good as mine, but I hope it all gets resolved soon for their sakes.

This brings me nicely onto talking about shipping security, insurance and paperwork.

Apart from making sure you are shipping with a reputable company, always check your removal company has a tracking procedure in place. They should be able to tell you where your goods are at all times.

Sometimes ships do get diverted for various reasons and this can delay your shipment. So when you are given the arrival date for your container, please remember this is always “estimated”.

We waited an additional 3 weeks for our container to arrive in Cyprus as the ship was diverted at the time due to the war in The Lebanon – but we always knew where it was.

We were concerned, because at the time this was such a dangerous zone, but we made sure our insurance covered all eventualities by purchasing a “total loss” marine insurance policy. So worst case scenario - say the ship had been bombed - we would have received the sum we insured our goods for.

Let’s move on to marine insurance.

Should you buy this type of insurance? Definitely! I cannot stress this enough. Thousands of people ship their personal possessions without appropriate insurance. What does this mean? Quite simply, you are putting everything you own at risk and you could lose it all.

Please remember when you are moving house, things can - and do - go wrong.

I’ll talk more about marine insurance next week and reveal some information from an insider who works in shipping that shocked me!

Until then, have a great weekend.

Best wishes

Jackie
http://www.cyprusbuyingguide.com/