Apologies to all for the long silence on the blog and thanks to those who have kept prodding me to get back to it. Without going into detail about the reasons why, I have been going through huge upheavals (which I suppose comes with the territory when you relocate countries and take on new projects) which have occupied my head-space so completely that I’ve been unable to write. This has been hugely frustrating for me personally as well as a lot of you who have been pestering me for new updates!
Anyway, suffice to say that the dust has settled somewhat and I’m finally feeling able to commence writing again, albeit being quite daunted about how much I have to fill you in on to bring things up-to-date…
Where to start? Where I left off I guess would be logical, but it’s hard to get my brain to focus on the events of five months ago when so much else has happened in-between. However the story has been linear so far, so despite being tempted to tell you the latest news immediately I feel I should keep the flow going (and hopefully some suspense) and try to retell things in the order they happened.
So. We had just got back from our wonderful break by the sea in Asilah when I received an email informing us that our belongings – which were being shipped from England – had arrived in Casablanca.
We had been waiting endlessly for this moment as we’d expected our boxes to arrive before Christmas (and had been especially missing our cosy dressing gowns for the morning dash to the bathroom in the freezing cold!) but due to Christmas shipping congestion (?) they weren’t due to arrive until February 3rd. Our delight at the shipment arriving a week earlier than this was short-lived however, as the attached invoice was the first of many cock-ups that ensued.
We’d been warned by other Brits who’d shipped goods that getting your stuff from Casablanca was a drama, but while hearing these stories we had felt secure because we’d organised (and paid for) our company to deliver directly to Fes.
The company on the Moroccan end had forgotten/ignored this fact and sent us an invoice for delivering our goods to Fes (among other random incomprehensible charges) that totalled nearly 7000dh. Unimpressed I fired off an email to our British delivery company and asked them to intervene and get the invoice amended as we’d already paid for delivery. A few days later an amended bill arrived for 4400dh, which apparently covered administration, taxes and sundries.
We then phoned the company in Casa and asked what was required to get our goods released. We were told that we needed to bring our passports and the payment for their invoice to an office in Casa – it was not ok to simply put a cheque in the post. We had been hoping to avoid another trip to Casa after the last time and had believed our stuff would be delivered to Fes without us having to go there, but apparently not.
Resigned to another long journey, we bought train tickets for Vincent’s next day off (in three days time) as there was no way we wanted to attempt driving in Casablanca again.
A very early Monday morning on Feb 1st, we blearily settled in for a four-hour train trip. Upon arrival it took us a while to located the office (Vince had written down the wrong phone number and after struggling to get directions for a full five minutes over the phone on a noisy street finally twigged he was talking to a completely unrelated company…) but we finally made it around lunch-time.
After demanding a full explanation of all the charges we handed over our passports, paid the invoice and thought we were done. But the fun had only just started. We were then told that we had to take the receipt to the company’s other office in the shipping yard “just down the road”. “Is it walking distance?” we asked and were assured it was only ten minutes by foot.
Twenty minutes later we were still tramping along a dusty, dirty highway with trucks belching exhaust fumes in our faces, wind whipping grit into our eyes and every blaring horn slowly eroding our nerves, and the shipping yard was still nowhere in sight. We twice asked people for directions and were told we were going the right way so persevered. However with empty stomachs growling and the fatigue building from the early start to the day we eventually gave up and finally managed to hail a taxi. Thank God we did because the place was another ten minutes by car. Despite cursing the stupid woman who had told us to walk we tried to calm ourselves in readiness for the next inevitable obstacle.
Sure enough, after speaking to the man in the depot the second major cock-up (not counting the ‘walking distance’ rubbish) was revealed.
“Where is your inventory?” asked the man. “Umm, we have a copy back in Fes but it was also given to the shipping company in England.” Ok. “And your carte de sejour?” “We don’t have one yet.” “House papers then?” “Back in Fes.” “Business registration papers?” “Not yet.” The list of paperwork required to clear our goods through customs had suddenly grown from simply passports and a cheque book to every official document they could think of.
“Tell him we already asked their office what we needed and none of this was mentioned – this is their fault and they need to sort it out,” I seethed to Vince.
The man just shrugged and said we could go to the customs office and explain, maybe it would be ok.
Thankfully this other office was just across the yard. We located the right person after fighting through crowds of men brandishing sheaves of papers surrounding a cluster of demountables.
We explained our situation (we’ve come all the way from Fes, the shipping company neglected to tell us about these other documents, can we just fax or send them to you etc) to the customs man in charge, who although sympathetic was unable to help. The reality of what we had to do next began to dawn. We would have to go back to Fes, collect all the appropriate papers and turn around and catch the train all the way back to Casablanca again the very next day. Before we left the customs office though, we made them write down every single piece of paper we would need to bring and made them check it twice.
By now we were furious. The whole arduous journey had been a total waste of time and money and despite being ravenous, tired and dehydrated we caught a cab straight back to the shipping company’s office in town to demand some recompense.
After hearing our complaint the girl at the desk palmed us off onto her manager. “Your company has been grossly incompetent and completely unprofessional,” I ranted. “At no time in any of our correspondence or phone calls was this list of documents mentioned and your ineptitude has wasted our time and money. We now have to go back to Fes and then return to Casablanca tomorrow to sort this out. The least you can now do is pay for our train tickets as an acknowledgement of your mistake.”
The lady manager picked up her phone and spoke to her colleague who had corresponded with us.
“She says you did not ask about these documents,” she retorted. “It is not our fault, we deal with hundreds of shipments and it’s not our responsibility to tell everyone what they need to bring.”
“I DID ask what we needed and your company did not do their job,” I insisted.
“Well, you obviously didn’t ask exactly the right question,” she said.
Unbelievable. Then to add insult to injury she turned around and said “oh, and by the way, you need to pay us storage charges from when the shipment arrived until it is delivered to Fes.”
WHAT? Not only would they not admit their mistake and reimburse us for our trouble, they now wanted us to pay more money for charges we had not been informed about until that moment.
Added to that the goods had been due to arrive on Feb 3rd; secondly, they hadn’t contacted me immediately; and thirdly, no mention had been made of these storage charges in their emails to me should we have been unable to get there straight away – which we couldn’t as, like most people, we weren’t able to drop everything and travel for miles across the country at the drop of a hat.
The conversation was clearly going nowhere however, so we resolved to contact a higher authority later on. Temporarily defeated, we dragged ourselves back to the train station – via a sandwich shop, fried prawn baguettes were not top of my culinary choices by but this stage anything would do – and began the long journey back to Fes.
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