MSC’s Communication Delays Led to Unfair D&D Fees, Company Says
MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company (USA) Inc. violated the Shipping Act when it failed to meet “minimum” requirements related to its detention and demurrage invoices for container shipments from Russia to Seattle, construction services company Doka said in a recent complaint to the Federal Maritime Commission. Doka said MSC charged it more than $260,000 in detention and demurrage charges for delays that the shipping line had caused, calling its practices “unfair” and “unreasonable.” The FMC should order MSC to pay Doka reparations and force the shipping company to waive the fees, Doka said.
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MSC shipped six containers of plywood from St. Petersburg, Russia, to the Port of Seattle in October 2021. When they arrived, CBP "accepted the entry with a rejected cargo release" because of “irregularities” with the bill of lading and manifest, Doka said, which were created by MSC. CBP told Doka the shipping documents didn’t match the information in CBP’s database.
Doka, which is headquartered in Austria, said it called and emailed MSC “on multiple occasions over several months” to try to resolve the matter, but MSC didn’t respond in a “timely manner.” Although Doka said it could have picked up the containers within a few days of their arrival in Seattle, MSC “took no steps” to obtain the rejected cargo release from CBP “for several months, all the while assessing charges against the cargo for demurrage, detention and dwell fees.”
Doka’s customs broker filed several entries in response to CBP requests, but they were rejected because MSC hadn’t corrected the manifest. CBP placed the containers into general order in November 2021, Doka said, which risked the containers being confiscated by the government or put up for auction if they remained in general order for more than six months. Despite continued requests from Doka, the company said MSC “failed to provide the requested assistance which would have allowed the immediate release” of the containers.
CBP eventually released the containers in February after Doka had placed “dozens” of phone calls and emails to MSC, the complaint said. Doka said it paid more than $6,000 to “satisfy” the general order and other administrative fees, and was charged more than $260,000 in detention and demurrage charges by MSC, which “far” exceeded the cargo value.
Doka said MSC’s “unreasonable delay in acting to fix the Automated Manifest System problem with CBP” led to “unfair, unreasonable and exorbitant charges for demurrage, detention and ‘dwell’ fees that made it “commercially unfeasible for Doka to retrieve its cargo.” MSC’s fees “did not and have not served their intended primary purpose of encouraging the prompt retrieval of cargo at the discharge port,” Doka told the FMC. An MSC spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.