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Returning Goods: Concerned Factor in International Trade

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Returning goods/ Re-exporting goods: Concerned Factor in International Trade

In international trade, smooth process of import-exporting cargo is one of the key factors of success. To achieve that, traders need to work on a lot of things: capital, products, applicable regulations and policies of both origin and destination countries, choice of reliable logistics partners…

Especially the product-related factors, if the required specifications or product quality are not matched, it is easily resulted to the situation that the buyer denies shipment; or the buyer has to return the goods after receiving; hence, causing negative effects to business activities of both seller and buyer, and costs incurrence.

Sharing about this topic, Ms. Theresa – Vantage’s Customs Expert – talked about a case that she and her colleagues had processed for our customer before 2019 Tet holiday.

Theresa – Customs Expert of Vantage’s Cusbrok Department

One day at the end of August 2018, a shipment from Penang, Malaysia was discharged at Hai Phong port, Vietnam; however, since contracted-particulars were not matched, the buyer denied it. Seller and buyer had several negotiations but could not reach the agreement that buyer will accept cargo, eventually the shipment was forced to return. And due to some reasons, the shipment was not returned until end of December 2018, incurring a demurrage amount of more than USD7,200.

On December 26, 2018, seller’s logistics company contacted Vantage, asking for assistance to re-export that shipment to Malaysia. Being assigned to assist them, Theresa immediately took action, contacted all related parties to obtain details and worked out a solution. Bearing in her mind that the faster the processing of return is, the more cost she could save for customer, Theresa had fully prepared all relevant information and documents, just waiting for official confirmation from the seller and their logistics company’s confirmation to proceed.

On January 22, 2019, Theresa finally received confirmation from Malaysia to proceed the re-export tasks. Theresa and her team ran to fulfill the tasks in the rushing period, targeting themselves “no mistake – no delay” to load the shipment onboard before the long Lunar New Year holidays to cut down demurrage cost for customer.

Thus, with professionalism and spirit of ‘supporting customer first’, on January 30, 2019, Theresa and her colleagues had completed all necessary procedures (obtaining signature and stamp from related parties is the most time-consuming in this task) and loaded the shipment onboard to return to seller.

Theresa added that re-exporting procedure is never simple as many people may think. It involves a lot of complicated documents, relations, problems, costs. If seller and buyer are not co-operative, the shipment could easily be stuck for months, cost incurred easily reaches to thousands USD, and even much more if the cargo is in reefer container.

To avoid this situation, the seller needs to check carefully the status and particulars of goods and other contracted conditions before shipping out; meantime, the buyer should check carefully the information before receiving the goods.

In case the buyer denies cargo due to any reason, both seller and buyer should co-operate to return shipment as smoothly and quickly as possible, avoiding unnecessary cost incurrence, especially demurrage / storage cost which is considerably high (average 60-70USD/day).

If you have any inquiry on returning goods / re-export procedures, our Customs Expert – Ms. Theresa/ Email: theresa-vn@vantage-logistics.com is willing to assist.

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