Anglo Pacific or 'Anglo Pathetic'?

[NickB]

Nick Bell to stephen.gray managing director Anglo Pacific 17 Oct (4 days ago)

Hi Stephen

I'm an unhappy customer. I have contacted Daniel Easton & Bianca Robinson several times now to resolve my problem but no joy, hence the email to you.

I recently shipped some items from UK to NZ at a cost of GBP189. My shipping reference was xxxxxx. On my quote xxxxxx it states "You will be entitled to a full refund of MONEY BACK GUARANTEE shipping charges in the event that the overall transit from collection to arrival at destination port exceeds 12 weeks, subject only to force majeure or other circumstances entirely beyond our control." The items were collected 14th July. The ship did not arrive in Christchurch port by 6th October, which is 12 weeks. So I want to claim against this guarantee.

The guarantee says nothing about being subject to other terms and conditions. Despite this, your staff have denied the claim saying that the 12 weeks starts from when they received my payment. As well as not forming any part of the guarantee, it is nonsensical for them to use this excuse anyway, which they don't seem to understand. I paid by UK bank internet transfer on 15th July. Your bank would have received the funds the same day (wrong!, doh!). This is still more than 12 weeks.

So, please approve my claim.

As a business owner I politely make two suggestions to avoid this issue in future. Firstly, the guarantee text is not very well worded, easy to fix. Secondly, the root cause of this problem was that your staff were very fast to arrange collection of my goods, but did not communicate when they were going to ship. My items sat around your warehouse for a month before dispatch. If they had actively informed me of this when I placed my order - rather than just publishing shipping shedules on your web site - all of the problems caused by the delay would have been avoided.

I look forward to receiving your positive response.

Regards, Nick Bell

[Duncan74]

Edit - only saw the first 2 posts for some reason

[NickB]

Stephen Gray to me 19 Oct (2 days ago)

Dear Mr Bell

I acknowledge receipt of your e-mail correspondence.

The Money Back Guarantee that you refer to is subject to certain conditions. We have tried not to make these conditions onerous because the spirit of this offer is that we will despatch your personal possessions as quickly as possible, or the freight costs of shipment are on us. I think you will be hard pressed to find any shipping company in the United Kingdom who will despatch your consignment without payment, and this condition is central to our Money Back Guarantee. I note that your payment was received on 21st July and the vessel was scheduled to arrive at the port on 09th October, which is within the twelve week transit period we have offered.

I am sorry that you have found it necessary to write to me and express dissatisfaction with the service provided, but would like to thank you for bringing this matter to my attention.

Yours sincerely

Stephen Gray

[NickB]

Nick Bell to Stephen 19 Oct (2 days ago)

Stephen,

Thank you for your prompt reply.

>>The Money Back Guarantee that you refer to is subject to certain conditions

Even if you think is is, I don't believe you can modify the terms of your offer after I order. I placed my order based on your quote, which says "You will be entitled to a full refund of MONEY BACK GUARANTEE shipping charges in the event that the overall transit from collection to arrival at destination port exceeds 12 weeks, subject only to force majeure or other circumstances entirely beyond our control." This mentions no payment conditions.

>>despatch your consignment without payment, and this condition is central to our Money Back Guarantee

If this is the case, why is this not detailed in the text of the guarantee?

For your own information, not that I think it is relevant, I paid the account as soon as I was in receipt of the details from Anglo to do so. I was sent your bank details by Daniel Easton on 13th July but told specifically that I must include my invoice number on the payment so you could trace it. I did not get this number until 14th July (the day of collection, from a document provided by the driver), sent to me by email, also on the day of collection, by my father in the UK. My payment (from a UK bank, internet transfer, made immediately) then was processed the next working day, the 15th. So trying to get out of the refund by blaming me for not paying you fast enough is hardly fair or 'in the spirit of this offer'.
I was not asked and had no ability to prepay, given when I received the payment information.

Please reconsider my claim. I did everything I was asked, and your company is not meeting its boldly stated guarantee.
If you do not do so, I will regretfully start 'small claim' proceedings in the county court against Anglo so that you have to.

Further, I will also publish all my email correspondence back and forth to Anglo on as many public expat internet forums as I can such as www.enz.org, www.expatforum.com, britishexpats.com, www.britishexpat.com, www.alloexpat.com etc. This will allow other potential users of your service to decide for themselves if your are being reasonable rejecting my claim or not. As public forums you will of course have the ability to respond publicly.

Best, Nick

[NickB]

Stephen Gray to me 20 Oct (1 day ago)

Dear Mr Bell

I am sorry that you feel it necessary to threaten the issuing of proceedings against Anglo Pacific and the publishing of this information on the websites you refer to. I believe we have explained the situation fully and under the circumstances you are not entitled to a refund of the shipping charges as the vessel has arrived within twelve weeks of you settling your account with Anglo Pacific.

I trust this clarifies our position.

Yours sincerely

Stephen Gray

[NickB]

Nick Bell to Stephen 08:37 (40 minutes ago)

Hi Stephen,

Thank you for your reply, but your own terms and conditions don't bear this out.

I printed a set from your web site today. They have no reference at all to the Money Back Guarantee. The only description of the guarantee is as I have previously detailed from my quote; "You will be entitled to a full refund of MONEY BACK GUARANTEE shipping charges in the event that the overall transit from collection to arrival at destination port exceeds 12 weeks, subject only to force majeure or other circumstances entirely beyond our control."

There are no other terms and conditions that I can find. The invoice document left at the point of collection was a carbon copy with no terms on it and is blank on the reverse.

Its not reasonable to reference the validity of my claim to some unrelated clause in your terms and conditions.

Please reconsider, save us all time and trouble.

Rgds, Nick

[NickB]

So I had to sit and read all their terms and conditions today - dull. Of course, there is no mention of the money back guarantee. The "we can't dispatch until we get paid" is reasonable practice of course but what seems unfair to me is that they are linking this unrelated clause now when it suits them to the guarantee.

The simple words "subject to terms and conditions" added to the guarantee text would have made all this moot, and I would accept I would not be able to claim. If they had been upfront about the dispatch date when I ordered then again, I would not have been able to complain.

So it seems to me that Anglo have tried to be clever by printing a bold guarantee on their quotes, but then try and wriggle out of it when it goes wrong.

[NickB]

So the current status is - I have just flicked an email to BAR, as Anglo's terms & conditions mention that as BAR members they use their dispute resolution service. Maybe BAR will make them see sense, or more like, as Anglo are paying members of BAR then they will ignore them too!

As I said I would I am going to stick this up on all the forums - that does not seem unreasonable. Then if no help from BAR they it will be a county court claim for the money back - yawn but I have all the time in the world....

[ralf-nz]

Thanks for sharing! I second your interpretation and wish "all the best" - or at least "have fun" .

We had a kind of analogue situation several years ago with a relocation company in Europe. In the end we got our money back after engaging two lawyers, going to court and involving a debt collector. (The finally collected amount was around five times as much as what we had initially claimed.)

[NickB]

Thx for the support Ralph