What do I do with this? Need help...

[Manitoba Moose]

Have a used excavator on a truck stuck at the Coutts crossing. Here's the story...

Our client bought a small excavator from a company in Portland, OR and it was being shipped from Bozeman, MT to MB. Instructed our client that he had to do the 72 hours pre-notice and he had the customs broker A.D. Rutherford register it at Portal, ND and it was cleared to cross on Thursday afternoon after 2:30 pm.

Truck picked up the unit and had some other LTL on it going to AB so he changed the crossing from Portal to Coutts. Should not be a problem as we had the customs broker who registered the 72 involved and he spoke to all the crossings involved.

Truck gets there on Friday and is refused entry. The officer told him that he had no record of this unit being cleared at Coutts, it was cleared at Portal but they don't recognize Portal's clearance.

The Broker was great and placed calls to Portal, Coutts, and Whitlash, MT and after speaking to all parties, Coutts agreed that they would accept a transfer from Whitlash but not any other port. Portal transfered the clearance paperwork to Whitlash, who in turn sent it to Coutts.

After all that, driver gets to Coutts crossing and is again turned away because "They do not accept faxes or emails. You must have the original Bill of Sale. Don't come back here without it."

I have never, ever heard of this lunacy. What can we do because if we call US Customs at Coutts and lodge a complaint, we will never have an easy time crossing at that border point again.

This is retrobution at it's best but, unless someone here can give me an idea of what to do, we will have no choice but to UPS the original paperwork from Portland, OR and restart the 72 hours again at Coutts.

Is there any way out of this?

 

[jonny-chicken]

Hey Manitoba Moose,

I have run into a similar problem twice now, and both times the fix was the same...

Customs are being difficult about bringing in anything that appears to be any sort of vehicle. They want the original bill of sale with ink on it...

The way we got around it was to take the copy of the bill of sale to a US bank on the US side of the border. I used Key Bank but others will do it also. I had to visit and call several banks before they would do this for me, but was ultimately successful at Key Bank in Buffalo, NY.

I took the copy of the bill and my identification into Key Bank and had them Notarize the copy. I told them that I hereby certify that this is a true copy of the original bill of sale. They had me write this in my own writing on the back of the bill of sale copy, and they put their stamp on it. Oh, and I think they charged me the outragous sum of $2.00

Take that back to the border and should be good to go...