Hey Joe,
My inlaws are in/around Durham (not sure exactly how it is spelled). I've never actually looked at it on a map, but I feel like it is about 15-20 minutes North of the LL Bean Store (what is that Freeport?). It could actually be in any direction, but about 15-20minutes from there. But I always feel like we travel past LL Bean to get to their place, and then backtrack when we go there for the must shop Bean visit.
So, for the sake of people that might follow your thread & learn a bit too for their own future needs, as mentioned above, you were burned by ISPM laws. ISPM stands for International Standards of Phyto-Sanitary Measures. It is basically a bunch of standards for keeping potential invasive species from traveling the globe. Almost every country in the world adheres to it, with a few exceptions. The exceptions are really, really, really poor countries, or border sharers (US/Canada, although we both adhere to them when dealing with other countries), and Australia/New Zealand. Because of their nature as continents by themselves, Australia & New Zealand actually adhere to a more stringent set of rules, specific to them. You could sort of consider it ISPM Plus, if that makes sense.
The burn of intl. trade & being an IOR (Importer of Record) is that you had no knowledge of what they did on the shipper end, but you are 100% responsible & liable for it. The next question I have for you is (if you are willing to share), who did you engage as your freight forward, and Customs Broker (same firm, two different firms, etc...)? I ask because they didn't really provide you with very good service here. This actually does happen more often than you would think, and Customs has a bunch of rules & regulations regarding how to handle it.
1. You could have paid roughly $1,500-2,000 & had the whole container fumigate right there at port. Depending on how you think that might affect the trucks upholstery, maybe not a good option, but could be done.
2. If the wood can be easily separated & identified, you can simply pull that wood out & send it back (ultimately what you are doing right now according to the article).
3. If it is deemed impossible to determine how the risky stuff is, compared to the safe stuff, you can ship back, or destroy. (not really the case with your container, but can happen depending on what product is shipping).
4. there are a couple of other options too, but I can't think of them right now.
You should not have needed to call in favors from people in power to get this resolved, as the rules are already there. The only two reasons how this happen, that I can think of off hand is either 1. your broker isn't as experienced as they claim, and were in over their head here, or 2. your broker decided that your business wasn't worth a ton of extra effort, and so they just pushed it aside, & left you to do the heavy lifting. There might be another scenario too, but those are all that I can think of here. In either case, if these were the situations you found yourself in, you should find a different broker.
I don't want to talk about your business publically, but if you want to PM me & discuss your costs/charges, I'd be more than happy to discuss rates & such with you. I haven't imported a container out of Central America in years, so I can't speak to the freight charge very well, but we can discuss broker fees & docs turnover, port charges & such.
Best,
Abe
