Customodaladmin February 18, 2022
Garlic, A Shipping Success Story

At Customodal, our team is dedicated to helping your business succeed. This is a shipping success story that we wanted to share! When Patrick B from Gourmet Garlic walked into our office in Marshfield, WI out of the blue one day asking for help, we embraced our can-do attitude and helped him ship a machine he purchased in China that was “stuck” in-transit.

We were able to listen to Patrick’s story and grasp that the core issue was a misunderstanding of purchase terms. Patrick thought he had purchased the machine with “door to door” shipping but instead the incoterms of the transaction meant he took possession and transportation responsibility at a warehouse in Chicago.

He was understandably frustrated that the seller wanted almost $800 MORE to ship the machine from Chicago to his location when he thought he had already paid for that. Once we understood the issue and explained to Patrick that he hadn’t paid for that leg of transportation, we provided him an option for us to arrange transport at a cost to him of less than $200. He agreed and we had the machine picked up the next day and delivered to him the day after.

Some unique challenges involved in this project included educating an infrequent/first time importer on incoterms and arranging transportation from an international port of entry.We first took time to understand Patrick’s frustration, applied experience to get to the core problem, and educated Patrick so that he could make an informed decision about the next step.

Helping Patrick fits into the Customodal values, where it’s all about collaboration, openness, and teamwork.

It’s been more than 12 years since somebody walked into our office inquiring about shipping services in person and Patrick was such a genuine person who really just needed someone to listen and help him understand this complicated process he had never been through before. It’s in our nature to want to help and it was great to be able to.

Patrick was super-satisfied with how we listened and understood his problem, how we clearly explained what needed to be done, and how quickly we got it done for him….at a good price….without ever having met him or done business together before. Patrick’s a Customodal client now and we expect that will last a long time.

And, his garlic is darn good. We recommend the Romanian Red!