dont use this carriers online system

Good Morning all,

Industry wide Warning to all Freight Forwarders;

Today I wanted to share with you an incredibly alarming experience we have endured with trying to ship on Maersk line/Hamburg Sud using Maersk Spot.

A preamble for those not aware; late last year the respected Carrier Hamburg Sud　 (now owned by Maersk) made several Forwarder customers aware that the contracts they had were not going to be renewed and that only the actual BCO’s would be offered rate contracts; meaning if a Forwarder wants to get a booking they had to go on to the Maersk website and do a “spot” booking/rate request on an individual shipment basis.

I vowed and declared publicly that we would put HS and Maersk on our DO NOT USE EVER list as it was, in my opinion, a full frontal attack on our industry.

We were then approached by our Carrier rep with whom we have had a long and close relationship and they literally begged us to give them a try.

I respect relationships as one of my pillars of business and so relented and gave the go ahead for my team to explore this.

We did an intensive training session with their Mearsk Spot program leaders ; all good so far….

We made a booking on the 7th Feb 2022 from Melbourne to Lyttleton for 1 x 40ft on the Vessel Safmarine Bayete V209N ETD 05.03.2022

We received a rate that was comparable to ANL of about usd2000 (all up) booked about 5 weeks out

Two weeks later on the 22nd Feb we requested an amendment to the destination (from Lyttleton to Auckland) as requested by our customer, and expected the usd400 amendment fee as we had been instructed in our training .

Guess what happened ????

We received an invoice for close to Ten Thousand US$ for this 40ft.

It appears that they can change the pricing !!!!

I have shielded our Forwarder Customer to this ludicrous price increase and charged them what we had quoted and I have paid the Maersk invoice even though I am about 10k AUD out of pocket.

In the background we have tried appealing to their management but to no avail. ………….

I feel so strongly about this I have stuck my neck out to let you know about our experience.

My best

Lance Evans