Customer advice

What are destination charges?

Destination charges explained

Destination charges are costs incurred after your shipment has arrived at its destination. These costs apply to most countries regardless of the shipping company you use. A typical breakdown of these charges includes Customs Inspection Fees, Port Document Fees, Port Handling Charges and Warehouse Handling Charges. Each country has specific procedures and costs depending on its laws, customs rules, and your shipment's size, weight, contents or purpose.

Unfortunately, many shipping and removal companies either don't know the cost of these destination charges or intentionally hide them from their quote and state the exclusion in the small print, leading to inaccurate quotes and surprise costs. However, we at Seven Seas Worldwide are committed to 100% transparency.

Destination charges cover the following benefits:

Transport from the port or import hub to our depot, then to your address, including tolls, gate fees and sometimes demurrage.
Port charges, including discharging the container from the ship and handling it before delivery to our hub.
Container cleaning, including an x-ray and fumigation.
Hub/depot handling, including repositioning and loading for delivery.
Customs and quarantine inspection and clearance.
Storage for two weeks following the shipment's arrival at our hub after customs clearance.
Unloading time for our driver to assist at the destination.

Further benefits when booking our services:

Online tracking to monitor your goods' worldwide movement.
Site inspection to ensure a smooth loading day experience.
Customer service - around-the-clock and multilingual.
Pre-notified time slots for deliveries and collections.

Couple looking at destination charges on a tablet

A transparent process you can trust

When booking with Seven Seas Worldwide, there are no nasty surprises. Starting with your free instant quote, you'll see an itemised cost breakdown at every stage of your shipping experience, including a detailed destination charge specific to your shipment and destination country. We've even created a guide on Avoidable Charges, which we recommend you read to avoid extra costs.

One of the reasons we can give our customers such a precise breakdown at the quote stage is our trusted end-to-end service. Thanks to a worldwide network of depots, multilingual customer service and in-depth local knowledge, we can oversee every aspect of the shipping journey.

Your goods will be collected and delivered by our drivers or one of our partners, you can monitor your shipment's whereabouts via our online tracker, and we are always ready to answer any questions you have around the clock.

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