Container Caught Fire On Sea, But Client Forgot To Make Insurance….

My client Modi is from India, he is a very good dealer of pipe tools. He ordered some items, shipped on Jan 23rd 2019 under FOB Terms.

In the February of 2019, I received a bad news from Modi's forwarder agent, the vessel caught fire on sea. There is 5 containers damaged, and our goods was in one of them. Opps…..Only the god knows my feeling at that time, there was 10,000 containers on the vessel, why my client’s goods?! Definitely, we won the “prize”…….

OK, we can’t waste time to be sad, we should do something to minimize the loss for Modi. After all, he's the biggest victim of this, because he forgot to make insurance for goods, so he need to afford all losses. Friends who are familiar with the shipping terms should know that under the FOB terms, the seller have no responsibility to make insurance for the goods, if the buyer forgot to make insurance, they have to afford all the losses. Anyway, Modi is my client and even my friend, I should help him.

Because of the accident, the vessel had to be docked in Singapore and accept the checking. At the same time, we pacify the customers and actively communicate with the forwarder agent hoping to know the damage degree of our goods as soon as possible, and hope to let customers get the goods soon, even if the damage is very serious. After about 4 months, Modi finally got his goods, but they all be rusty unfortunately. We suggested Modi to keep the goods and tried our best to tell him how to repair them. 

It's more serious than we thought, everything was rusty. Firstly, we suggested Modi to use rust remover to deal with the rust, then weld the cracks and repainting. Finally he said the goods looks good again, could try to sell maybe. But he also knows the precision already been lower because it was rusty and cracked, so he decided tell clients about it and sell them with a very low price to retrace some losses. We appreciate his decision very much and finally agree to collect only half of his payment first to help him through the difficulties.

My friends. Making insurance is a very important step. If Modi has insurance, the situation could be totally different, he could get 110% of the goods value from the insurance company. So, I am here to urge everybody to provide insurance for your goods before shipping, which sometimes really works.

Below are the pictures for a part of rusty items.