My Awful Experience Moving Personal Good Using Crowley Logistics - Part 2 San Juan PR

Part 2 of My Awful Experience Moving Personal Good Using Crowley Logistics

On the morning of 1/23/2017 I went on my way to pick up my boxes at the Crowley Port located at (Calle Lindbergh, San Juan, 00904, Puerto Rico), upon zipping around the many corners of the rubbish roads of PR I finally made it to the entrance of the building. Granted its easier to ask and call (+1 787-729-1000) the operator and ask for directions, he/she will in more details describe the router to the entrance. 

Once there I showed the operator behind a glassed desk my paperwork which was basically my bill of landing and my SUPR number on the top of the paper located on the confirmation email of the bill of landing. I waited a good 15 minutes before she printed some more papers and told me to wait in the room next door.

I proceeded to the room which is just the entranced to the warehouse with a waiting / sitting space for visitors. I was asked to sign in to a sheet and I sat. 10 Minutes later I showed the employer my ID (Here in PR they like to document ID numbers a lot when dealing with any government work) he then sent a worker with a forklift to go grab a wooden pallet with my two boxes. He then told me to bring my truck back around, I did so, grabbed my boxes loaded them and left.

Here is where I will fill you in with the "bad" parts. 

Way before I went to pick up my boxes I called Crowley a million times to ask how I went about picking up my boxes. Please note this was my first time shipping ANYTHING overseas with personal goods, so I was anxious to have my belongings already since they were essentials that I needed.

Sad to say but I had to call Crowley so many times due to Puerto Rico's lack of work ethics of many people here, I even had to call Jacksonville HQ just to get a hold of someone here because either when I called the line ranged forever or they sent me to an automated inbox. I had the unfortunate luck of getting an employee who's name I will not mention or we shall refer to her as "Jen" she was titled as a "Logistics Coordinator" many times she was my only point of contact, her and the main operator for basic information as of how to claim my boxes.

 Now before you think I am making things up hear me out. I was told back in Jax, that all I needed to do was to go to the Crowley port here in San Juan and show them my bill of landing and that was it. 

NOPE 😐

So when speaking with Crowley here in PR in regards to picking up my boxes, I asked Jen what where the steps needed, aside from having terrible phone etiquette the coordinator told me that I had to navigate to a website called SURI which is basically Puerto Rico's Tax collections website for imported goods. At no point did anyone back in Jacksonville, notify me that I had to pay taxes when my boxes arrived after I had already paid my taxes back in Jacksonville. I was a bit irritated and tried to argue on why I had to pay taxes to go get my boxes. I even called HQ in Jax, spoke to Stacey Desanto and told her that Crowley here in PR was trying to make me pay to pick up my items. She sounded confused and said that she didn't know that I had to pay anything else but that if that is what they were saying that that was what must be done. So I sucked it up and proceeded to the next step. Paying these damn taxes.

Its about to get good..

While on the phone with Jen, she told me to go to the SURI website and once I pay my taxes on the boxes that I would receive a declaration number and with that number that the guys in the warehouse in San Juan would be able to sign off my boxes and give them to me

Lets all laugh together because it wasn't as easy as she said it would be.

So I asked her to help me on how I went about paying my taxes on the SURI website. She literally had no clue on how to use the website and kept claiming that the website is new and that she doesn't really know how to use it. That the website is being implemented and that she was used to using the old system and not this new system. 😑

 How the hell does someone who is claiming to be a Logistics Coordinator, is not trained on how to instruct the public on how to claim their boxes? I found this very unprofessional. 

So this is where it gets better, she was quick to mention that they do have someone else who does not work for Crowley (a 3rd party) that can assist you on claiming the boxes. Of course she told me the service wasn't free and it would cost me $25. I was curious as to why she would be asking me to use someone else to pick up my boxes after I had already paid all my expenses of shipping my belongings smells fishy right? 
I tried to tell her that I was tech savvy, that I have a degree in Information Security, that I could figure it out on my own.. I could tell in her tone she didn't like that, so finally after she kept insisting that I had to pay someone, she emailed me an outdated Spanish version PDF on how to claim it yourself. The PDF was horrible. Why? 

• There was no English version (you'd think there would be one for a company of its size)
• I had to skip to page 10 just to see visuals on how to get my declaration number
• No high lights or identifications on easily showing "Next do this" I was honestly lost
  
  I proceeded to call Jax to fill a complaint, but that did no good. So once again I sucked it up and proceeded to figuring it out on my own on how to pay my taxes and get my declaration number. I will create a guide for those of you out there on how to do this and possibly save you several hundreds $ 

I figured out on my own how to navigate through the SURI website and claimed the taxes on my boxes, at the end of the page when you submit the info, they mention that you need to pay in an external link. I did that and finally after paying my taxes, I got my declaration number. But guess what.. 

The declaration number was no good. What a surprise right ?

When I called Jen back to let her know that my taxes on the boxes where paid for and that I figured out how to do it. She said please wait (she put me on hold) and then came back and told me that for some reason on her end it wasn't showing up. Total bullshit She then said the same thing she said before. That since it was not showing up in the system that the only other option would be to pay the guy that they "know" I was infuriated and just wanted to pick up my boxes. I even emailed her confirmation that I paid my taxes and showed her my declaration number.

at this point I had several options, I could of kept trying to argue my point but I knew that it would get me no where. So I played stupid and said sure I'll pay the $25. Here is where we get back to the beginning of the story. As I mentioned after I went and picked up my boxes literally NO ONE mentioned anything about a $25 fee of any kind. I was kindly asked for my name, the bill of landing paperwork, and my ID that is all. I went about my marry way but ironically, as I was pulling out of the parking lot about 5 minutes from the Crowley port I get a call from Jen and she says "Hey Franco its me Jen, did you pick up the boxes?" I said yes we just left, she said "did you pay the $25" at this point she seemed anxious and I quickly tossed the phone to my grandpa since he was insisting on speaking with her as his Spanish is much better than mine's especially in a defensive situation. I over head the conversation (because she didn't know she was on speaker) but after my grandfather said that "we just left the building and at no point did we see a desk with Jen anywhere nor did we hear anyone bring up the $25 fee. That if we did we would of paid for it" Obviously I wasn't going to but she comes back and says yet another lie. She says that my taxes where waived and that all I needed to do was pay the fee. I was like "are you kidding me?" She did not waive anything at all I can provide a screenshot on my card. Also how would she waived a federal tax that is required for any imported goods? Hmmm ? 

Coming to a conclusion..

Throughout this whole experience I learned that you truly do learn best though trail and error and through personal experience. A company this size should NOT be operating like this. There is no strategic flow, everything is unorganized and at this point I am not sure if Jen from Crowley is running an illegal scam and charging people for something that they already get once they pay their taxes on those imported goods. Since then she has called me and told me to pay that if not that people from "aya fuera" meaning people from the mainland will follow collections to claim the money. She sent me a Crowley invoice for the money under "transport other".

She called me today and I have ignored all calls from her. Hopefully someone in Crowley that has the power to investigate her and this issue can figure out what is going on and fix all the problems that I ran into for claiming only two boxes. I feel sorry for those who are moving and bringing their whole house with them.

Have any questions or concerns leave your email below and I will reach out.