Back in December I said farewell to all my possessions at my home in Ealing. A truck came to collect box after box of stuff. I wasn’t bothering to ship anything big to Brazil – no furniture and I gave away a dozen or so big boxes of books. It was just books, clothes, my drums, and a few other things.
It cost me about £1,500 to ship 27 boxes to Brazil.
I thought that was the end of it. Surely that money covers the cost of shipping and any taxes… that’s what I thought.
I found out that the port in Brazil holds the boxes and they need to be checked by the police, customs, and the port authority. All these various agencies have paperwork that has to be completed individually. Eventually, once I realised that it was going to be weeks of chasing paper, we appointed a ‘fixer’ at the port – authorised to handle all the paperwork on our behalf.
The fixer alone was another £400. But it really was weeks of effort completing the paperwork – the boxes left Ealing on December 14th. They were only just opened and checked by the police today. they got a green light so I can now arrange to go and collect them all.
Unfortunately, the port charges rent for the space used by the boxes while all the paperwork is processed. It seems like a scam because you can’t avoid the paperwork, so whatever the port wants to charge, you have to pay.
So with the rent, the fees for the various agencies, and the fixer fee, it was another £1,500 for me to go and collect the boxes at this end…
If I had known that shipping some books and clothes would cost me £3,000 I could have sold everything in London and added that money to the £3,000 saved and gone to the shops in Brazil!
mark hillary 