Shipping to Turkey - bureaucracy and confusion.

[PeteJF 85]

Our goods form England are due to arrive in Turkey by mid October.

We had an email last week from the Turkish customs consultants in Istanbul who are dealing with our goods being shipped from England. There were some forms to fill in and instructions to get some of my documents verified for customs clearance purposes: a notarised translation of my passport and a notarised copy of our TAPU (property title deeds) and a power of attorney for use by the consultant dealing with the import.

We had instructions to first email scans of the documents to the consultants in Istanbul for checking before posting the actual documents.

Monday we went to an internet cafe and printed out the forms, then went to the Notary, with a translator to translate my passport to Turkish, the power of attorney to English and get notorised copies of all the documents made.
On Tuesday, after dropping stepson#2 at university we again went to an internet cafe to scan and email the documents.

Wednesday morning I got an email from the customs consultancy company saying we had made a mistake and sent them the wrong power of attorney form and that we must send the correct form as soon as we can.

Stepson#1 called the consultancy company to point out that we had only used the form they had sent to us, so it was their mistake that we had the wrong form. The woman at the consultants said she was very sorry, they had been very busy and she was too tired and had sent us the wrong form by mistake. She emailed the correct form.

We then had to contact the translator to meet us at the notary office to get the corrected paperwork sorted out. 

We have also sent copies of the receipts to the consultancy company to claim back the extra money we had to spend because of their mistake.

The consultants have emailed to say that all documents are now OK and once the shipment arrives in Mersin we must take the documents to their Mersin office for them to deal with and that there may be storage fees to pay while customs clearance is being organised.

Hopefully it will go smoothly now.

[Ken Grubb 1,484]

Good luck with it, Pete!

[PeteJF 85]

Thanks Ken, I will let you know of the progress.

 

[JustinM 46]

Having worked in Logistics here when I first arrived in Turkey, I can assure you there will most definitely be storage fees. Mersin is one of the busiest ports in Turkey and everything will get processed by who knows who. So, if you know no one, be prepared to wait a week or so. Don't want to be a bearer of bad news, and I hope I am wrong. Just telling you to be prepared for worst case. 

[PeteJF 85]

Thanks for the information.

The company I booked the shipping through in England said that they would organise delivery to our address in Mersin.

[PeteJF 85]

Another update on the delivery of my goods from England.

We had a message this morning from the consultants in Istanbul saying that we needed to provide another signed form to the local customs office in Mersin. It has to be the actual form, not a print out of a scan.

They are posting this form to us for me to sign, it should arrive Monday or Tuesday. 

So that the customs office know that it is my signature I had to go to the notary office today, with a translator and my passport, where I had to provide on another form six examples of my signature(witnessed by two people) to take with me when I go to the customs office with the form they are sending me.

[edit] Oh i almost forgot, we also had to send the Shipping company $500 for demmurage[sic] deposit.

[PeteJF 85]

The required paper from the shipping consultants in Istanbul arrived on Monday , we took it to the shipping company office at Mersin port.

On Tuesday we were told that we needed to provide another 2000ytl in fees and on Wednesday we were told that our goods should be delivered either Saturday or Monday.

[Ken Grubb 1,484]

Wow. Well at least you know your stuff is coming!

[PeteJF 85]

Our goods from England arrived this morning. The furniture lift truck came at around half eight and the shipping container arrived at nine.

 

The shipping container arrives.

 

Unloading onto the balcony.

The apartment is now full of boxes most of which still need sorting out. My wife started off saying that the container was not full, so we could have brought a lot more from Bristol. As the balcony and living room filled up with boxes she was wondering where we would put everything.
Our cat was delighted at seeing all the boxes and he was climbing and jumping from box to box.

On Monday I will call the shipping company in Bristol to thank them for their work.

[Ken Grubb 1,484]

Great to hear it all finally got there! Thanks for keeping us updated on the progress.

[PeteJF 85]

About the worst international shipping story I was told to me by a friend who moved to Islamabad, from Leeds.  Their shipping company went bust between sending off the cargo and filing the paperwork. Their cargo arrived but was held in Karachi for nearly a year while things were sorted out.