Shipping to Turkey - bureaucracy and confusion.

[PeteJF 60]

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 1,291]

Good luck with it, Pete!

[PeteJF 60]

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 60]

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 60]

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 60]

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 1,291]

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