Livingston sucks... Again

M

Manitoba Moose

Member
Jul 27, 2009
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Otterburne, MB
10
They did it again for the umpteenth time...

Picked up a load in Chicago going to Edmonton. We faxed the paperwork on Aug 10 at 4 pm. & told them we were crossing Aug 11 at 6 pm.

Checked the PARS tracker on Aug 11 @ 8 am and it was "Shipment ready to transmit to CBSA". Driver gets there at 8 pm last nite and its not cleared and Livingston tells him they can't figure out why its not sending to CBSA.

Called them again this morning and the "team" is not answering and she will get someone to call me back.

Called their Mississauga office and asked for A/P and talked to a girl named Chris and told her I wanted the address for Livingston A/P so I could send my invoice for waiting time. She can't authorize that and will have someone call me.

Does anyone know their A/P mailing address and if anyone has gone this route?

I'm so pissed right now at these clowns I could spit nails...
 
Can see your frustration!

I can see that you are frustrated, although you had a 12 hour period to re check the livingston site to see if the clearance was accepted by customs.
We never send a truck to the border without making sure all clearances are accepted by customs. Messsages such as in transmission or waiting for customs reply are not enough.

In the case you have a clear cover sheet, requesting the customs broker get in touch with you in the event of a problem with the proper contact info, you may have some amunition.
 
Livingston

We had issues with Livingston yesterday as well with getting clearance but we received a call from their office informing us that Customs computers were down and it might take a while for approval.
 
We add these charges to our freight bill. We allow 1 hour at the border and let the client that is paying Livingston hammer it out.
As long as we have done our job and checked to ensure that there are no issues -it might make the customer think about changing customs brokers....
 
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alx said:
I can see that you are frustrated, although you had a 12 hour period to re check the livingston site to see if the clearance was accepted by customs.
We never send a truck to the border without making sure all clearances are accepted by customs. Messsages such as in transmission or waiting for customs reply are not enough.

In the case you have a clear cover sheet, requesting the customs broker get in touch with you in the event of a problem with the proper contact info, you may have some amunition.
Click to expand...

We did keep in constant contact with Livingsucks. Our driver was on the phone all night with them and I took over once I got in this morning.

Update...

Got the customer involved and he called Livingsucks and the load has now been sent to customs and is now in process of being released. It had nothing to do with customs since it was never sent to customs.
 
Interesting...

We had somewhat of a similar situation a few months back, Livingston needed to make a correction of their entry when we arrived at customs (outbound) we were allowed to stay in secondary as our ACE was accepted. Saturday night the call center could not get ahold of anyone from the "team" to correct the issue. Sunday US customs sends us back as the broker has not contacted them or made the required change. We bill the customer, customer doesn't pay because Livingston says that it's the carriers fault that they did not contact the Team, had to repaps everything the next day and wait for all to get accepted again.

Lost the customer, they short paid our invoice without the waiting time based on Livingstons feedback and even now we are still going back and forth months later with Livingston to explain to the customer what the issue was, as they still say we are at fault for not contacting them despite the fact they record their phone conversations at call center level with proof that the team would not respond to our requrest for assistance on the entry with US customs.

Maybe there is something we can do as a group to take this higher up at Livingston as it appears not to be an isolated issue and the continue to wipe their hands of responsbility to the customer and leaves the carrier with all of the costs, delays and problems with the customers.
 
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Livingston

Or, you could do what I did.

I videotaped the messge that LIVINGSTON left on my phone after we spent hours going back and forth trying to get them to clear our expedited shipment.

It took all the heat off us and the customer wasn't happy to hear what Livingston was saying about them.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHTi9Zjxuxw]Livingston - YouTube[/ame]

Justice was served that day!!
 
Although this thread seems like a southbound shipment, we had similar problems with a northbound shipment.

We had to wait 8 hours after the 3 hours we gave them to have a PARS setup and cleared by Livingston. I charged the receiver $600 for border delay and the day he received the invoice my phone rang off the hook. After a short discussion with the receiver, a high ranking official from Livingston called me to get the information about the shipment. In the end, people on the team that was handling this major account for Livingston did not believe that our border crossing time was accurate and just decided to leave it for the next shift. Livingston was very apologetic, I got a bunch of cell phone numbers for managers, the receiver paid the bill and said that it was coming off of the next invoice for Livingston.

It was one of the happiest days of my life to be able to teach Livingston a lesson. I have had to use the cell phone numbers twice since then and I have had amazing response from Livingston ever since.

I would recommend that if you're having any problems with the customs broker, give the broker a call and ask to speak to the supervisor and if you get someone who seems to want to shrug it off just mention that your next phone call will be to the brokers customer to let them know that the supervisor is not being helpful and additional charges for this shipment will apply. I have used this on a couple brokers and it works wonders. Nobody wants to lose a customer this way.
 
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