Broker Bank-- Because I am Rich, Bitch!

it's already May... I only posted once in April. I am not tired of whining, I have just been too lazy to do it.

Yesterday, one of our not-that- regular, one-shipment-every-2-months customer called about two containers that I cleared for them 2 weeks before.

"Uh.... My customer was supposed to pick up this container, but they forgot to do it, they didn't know they have to go to the terminal by a certain date. now there is demurrage. so they called the terminal and got the demurrage charge for only one container. they didn't realize the demurrage charge is per container. so now they are trying to pick up the containers. Can you cut a check for my customer, it's only 700 dollars and send your express messenger."

That is so thick-skinned!! Would you say this to your hairdresser? "Hi! I don't know you that well, but can you loan me some money and make sure you deliver the money as soon as possible?"

My boss told me to charge those guys $75 for express messenger. so i guess it's not as bad.

this phone call came at 4:50 PM by the way, so I could not verify with the terminal who the check is payable to. Not to mention the dumbass customer who sent the check did not tell the terminal how to apply the money they sent. I ended up writing a long explanation to the terminal, please apply our $ to container X, but if X is paid, apply the $ to Y... blah blah blah.

The point of the story is that the broker always gets treated like the bank. When your customer is in a bind, and sends their trucker to pick up the freight without checking for demurrage or availability, they are always like... "oh pay this and that for me" and often, they do not pay us back, or their accounting department will call us back and say "what is this charge?"-- and you say, "demurrage", and they get irate and say "why did my shipment go on storage .. blah blah" "because so and so from your company asked us to cut this charge blah blah"


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