See-saw shipping prices

Today is Monday, and the toys have to be at the warehouse tomorrow. I’ve been at the shipping agents all day. Really, all day. This was the first time I’ve been, although they are based in Gaungzhou. Its been complicated organising the shipping, very complicated. I haven’t been an easy customer, I wanted to get the goods directly into Liverpool, and it took a long time to explain this… ‘but its very normal that the goods go by road to Liverpool’, I know, but I want them to arrive by sea. I want to track the goods progress using an AIS system, and thats not so interesting if they’re in Felixstowe. We enquired about taking a full container too, as it should be easier to monitor and get into Liverpool, but in the end I went for the cheapest option, which wasn’t cheap at all.

I can’t tell you exactly why I was in the shipping agents office for SIX hours, but it has something to do with the fact that if you change the cost at one end, it changes the cost at the other end too, and this cost is not controlled by the same company. I just wanted, insisted on, a full quote. And they made me wait. There was also a mistake, quite a big one, in that the company here in Guangzhou never actually gave me a quote compatible with a quote from the UK, but never they never noticed this (I should have?!?!). In the end the cost was several hundred pounds more than they had originally quoted.

Meanwhile they’ve been repairing the toys which weren’t right at the factory, and sourcing the new boxes. Marco tells me everything is ready. So we are on time, good.