After the contract was signed, Company A opened a letter of credit on July 25th, and Company B of Hong Kong issued a shipping notice on June 5438+1October 65438+1October. Company B sent a full set of negotiation documents to the issuing bank at the beginning of 10+65438+ 10/0, and the salesman of Company A found no discrepancy after review, and negotiated payment.
The normal time from Hamburg to Wuzhou, Guangxi including transshipment in Hong Kong should be 45-50 days. 65438+At the beginning of February, Company A made several inquiries with Wuzhou Sinotrans Company, but there was no news of the goods. Company A suspected that Company B had backdated the bill of lading and immediately called Company B, but Company B replied that the goods had been shipped as scheduled.
12 In late February, Company A still hasn't seen the goods, so it telegraphed Company B to contact its German consignor again to help find out the whereabouts of the goods. Company B called back and said that there was a Christmas holiday in Germany, and no one in Germany went to work and could not be contacted. Company A has no choice but to wait.
/kloc-At the end of the Christmas holiday in early October, Company B called and said that the goods had arrived at Huangpu Port in Guangzhou in early February last year. Please send someone to Huangpu for customs declaration and delivery. At this time, the goods have been delayed by the customs for more than 40 days, and the customs declaration and delivery procedures of Company A have been completed by the end of the following year 1, resulting in container delay fees, storage fees, customs delay fees, travel expenses and other related expenses of more than 10 million yuan.
Case study:
The main reasons for the above results are as follows:
(1) There is no transshipment port stipulated in the contract. Company A takes it for granted that the transshipment port must be Hong Kong and the unloading port A must be Wuzhou. German shippers didn't know that there were ships coming and going from Hong Kong to Wuzhou, so they arranged the transportation route from Hamburg to Hong Kong to Guangzhou to Wuzhou. And the above route is reasonable.
(2) The original contract stipulated that the notifying party of the bill of lading was Sinotrans at the unloading port. After the goods arrived in Huangpu, Sinotrans Huangpu did not know who the owner was. According to the import contract standard of the original foreign trade company, the consignee of the bill of lading is usually "designated" and the notifier is "the shipping company of the destination port". Company A thinks that the destination port of the contract is Wuzhou, so they only contact Wuzhou Sinotrans and never think of Huangpu Sinotrans.
Solution:
In the future, if the destination port is an inland river or inland port, or there is no direct route between the loading port and the destination port, the import contract that adopts Incone RMS "C" group (such as CFR, CIF, CPT, CIP), that is, the contract seller arranges transportation and pays freight, needs to turn around:
(1) Transshipment is allowed, but the transshipment place must be indicated. The principle of economy and convenience should be considered in the selection of transshipment sites. It is best to go to places outside China customs area (such as Hongkong and Singapore) to avoid going through customs declaration or transit formalities elsewhere.
(2) The contract and letter of credit shall require the name of the consignee or foreign trade agency, the name and telephone number of the contact person, etc. Indicate the contact information in the "Notifier" column of the bill of lading.
(3) If possible, the import contract shall use FOB clause as far as possible, and the buyer shall arrange transportation with the shipping company.
2. One of my export companies received a foreign certificate from a country, and the goods were 40,000 lighters with a total value of 40,000 US dollars. Partial shipment is allowed and shipment is adopted. Later, the customer faxed us an urgent need for 10000 lighters (65438+ 0.4 of the total quantity), asking for air transportation in advance, and proposed that this part of the payment be wired to us before delivery. What should I do if I encounter such a problem?
Case study:
Upon receipt of telegraphic transfer, 65,438+00,000 lighters will be airlifted immediately. Then ship 30,000 lighters by sea before the validity of shipment, and then submit a full set of documents to the bank for negotiation. The quantity and amount on the document are 30 thousand and 30 thousand dollars respectively. Because the letter of credit allows partial shipment, the bank thinks that the goods have been shipped in partial shipments. As long as the documents are completely in conformity with the letter of credit, the issuing bank will perform the payment obligation with the matching documents according to the provisions of Article 10 (d) of UCP500. If the customer wants to cancel the 10000 lighter, the exporter can take a similar approach. If the letter of credit stipulates that "partial shipment is not allowed" or we do not make full use of the clause of "partial shipment is allowed", in order to solve the above problems, we have to ask our customers to amend the letter of credit, which will bring unnecessary bank charges and troubles to both importers and exporters.
3. One of our companies has received a foreign certificate from a country. The goods are 1X20 containers of various sports shoes and slippers with plastic soles, with the values of USD 4,565,438+054 and USD 2,846 respectively. Partial shipment is allowed. The document requires that we must provide the quality inspection certificate issued by China Commodity Inspection Bureau. Before the goods are ready for shipment, our commodity inspection bureau thinks that the quality of slippers does not meet the national standards and cannot issue quality inspection certificates for them. To this end, we immediately asked the customer to amend the letter of credit (that is, delete the quality inspection certificate clause of the slippers in stock). The customer refused to amend the letter of credit on the grounds that the cost of amending the letter of credit was too high, which might affect the delivery date, but said that he would still accept the goods as long as it was consistent with the sealed sample.
Case study:
At this time, we take the following actions: we deliver the goods on time according to the requirements of the letter of credit, and ask the shipping company to issue two sets of ocean bills of lading, representing the sports shoes and slippers in stock, and then negotiate with their respective export documents in complete sets (the date difference is slightly larger, but they must all be within the stipulated delivery date). Because the letter of credit allows partial shipment, the bank regards each set of documents as each batch of goods. After reviewing the documents in complete sets, the negotiating bank thinks that the documents under sports shoes fully meet the requirements of the letter of credit, while the documents under slippers in stock lack the quality inspection certificate. The negotiating bank has sent drafts abroad continuously. According to article 10 (d) and article 14 (b) of UCP500, the payment for sports shoes is safely recovered, while the payment for slippers in stock may be rejected by the issuing bank due to the inconsistency of documents. In fact, the customer accepted the above discrepancy and paid the money. If the letter of credit stipulates that "partial shipment is not allowed", it is impossible for us to make the above treatment to achieve the purpose of safe collection of foreign exchange.
To sum up, it is not difficult for us to see that it is of great significance to make full use of the "partial shipment allowed" clause to solve the above practical problems. It can not only save both importers and exporters a lot of troubles such as amending letters of credit and bank charges (sometimes importers will take the opportunity to ask for changes in payment methods, such as adopting T/T or D/P after shipment), but also spread the risk of foreign exchange collection for exporters. Therefore, when signing export contracts with foreign businessmen, we should try our best to get the letter of credit to allow partial shipment, which will help us solve some practical problems in the process of fulfilling the contract.
4.2001March, a domestic company (hereinafter referred to as Party A) evaluated an equipment import contract in a Canadian company (hereinafter referred to as Party B). According to Hengtong, Party A opened an irrevocable letter of credit at sight in favor of Party B on April 30, 2006.
The letter of credit requires Party B to provide a full set of clean on-board bills of lading when submitting documents.
On June 1 2006, Party A received the payment notice of import letter of credit from the issuing bank. After reviewing the negotiation documents, the business personnel of Party A found the following doubts in the bill of lading submitted by Party B:
1. The date of signing the bill of lading is earlier than the date of shipment.
There is no "on board" on the bill of lading.
According to the above doubts, Party A considers the bill of lading as a standby bill of lading and takes the following measures:
1. Submit the document discrepancies to the issuing bank and refuse to pay the payment.
2. The relevant judicial organs make fraud requests.
3. Query the delivery information to determine whether the goods have been delivered.
4. Send a written notice to Party B, raise Party A's questions and ask the other party to make a written explanation.
After receiving the notice from Party A and the letter of refusal from the issuing bank, Company B knew the seriousness of the matter, made a written explanation to Party A, and unilaterally emphasized the responsibility of the shipping company. In this case, Party A's company sent a letter to show its position again, and pointed out that due to Party B's reasons, the equipment did not arrive in Hong Kong within the time limit stipulated in the contract, and the installation and commissioning had been seriously breached, which caused incalculable losses to Party A. Party B was required to send someone to negotiate and solve the problem in time, otherwise Party A would take necessary legal measures to solve the dispute between the two parties. Party B sent people to China in July 2006. After Party A produced sufficient evidence, Party B admitted that the goods were shipped at the time stipulated in the contract for various reasons, and at the same time admitted that the bill of lading it submitted was a ready-made bill of lading. Finally, through negotiation between both parties, Party B agreed to reduce the price by 40,000 dollars on the basis of the total payment of 1.25 million dollars and provide three years of free maintenance service as compensation, and agreed to cancel the letter of credit and change the payment method to telegraphic transfer after the goods arrived at the destination port.
Case study:
The focus of this case is that the bill of lading in the negotiation documents submitted by Party B to the bank does not meet the requirements of clean on-board bill of lading stipulated in the letter of credit. As it is impossible for Party B to submit documents that meet the requirements to the negotiating bank of the letter of credit within the time stipulated in the letter of credit in actual business operation, it is fortunate that the prepared bill of lading is used as the official clean on-board bill of lading as the negotiation document. Don't you know that this practice not only violates the relevant requirements of the contract, but also constitutes fraud, and the actor should bear not only civil liability but also criminal liability? As the beneficiary of the letter of credit, we should sum up the following experience:
1. It is clearly stipulated in the contract and the letter of credit that the bill of lading in the negotiation document must be a complete set of clean on-board bills of lading.
2. After receiving the negotiation documents, carefully review the relevant documents and confirm that all documents meet the requirements of single conformity and single conformity.
3. Carefully check every detail in the bill of lading to ensure that the received bill of lading is a complete set of clean on-board bills of lading.
Suggestion:
For standby bills of lading, we must pay special attention to whether there is the word "on board" on the bill of lading, while prepaid bills of lading are generally marked with the word "on board", so it is difficult to identify their authenticity. Only by comparing whether the date when the beneficiary submits the bill to the negotiating bank is earlier than the signing date of the bill of lading, whether the shipping time is later than the signing date of the bill of lading, or through the flight schedule in the shipping announcement, can the two bills of lading find that the documents are inconsistent and refuse to pay, and then negotiate, arbitrate or refuse to pay. The countersigned bill of lading is "shipped". The fundamental difference between a counter-signed bill of lading and an advance bill of lading is that its signing behavior is implemented after the goods are shipped, while the advance bill of lading is actually before the goods are actually shipped. Because the counter-signed bill of lading is actually a "shipped" bill of lading, the carrier only advances the shipment date of the goods and the signing date of the bill of lading, which is difficult to find in the retrial process; Even if the bill of lading is confirmed to be a reverse bill of lading through the shipping announcement or the log book of the actual shipping ship, it is clear in UCP500 that the bank is not responsible for verifying the authenticity of the documents, so the applicant cannot refuse to pay for the goods. In this case, only through judicial procedures can we apply to the court to issue a stop payment order and implement property preservation. Only in this way can the issuing bank have the right to refuse to pay.
5. An export company in our country has successively signed two sales contracts for agricultural products with company B in London and company S in Switzerland, totaling 3,500 tons and valued at 82,750 pounds. The shipment period is from February of the current year to the following year 10. However, due to the failure of the original cargo ship, another outer ship had to be refitted, and it was not loaded until February 1 1. At the request of our company, the ocean shipping agent changed the date of the bill of lading to 65438+1October 3 1. After the goods arrived in Rotterdam, the buyer objected to the shipment date and asked our company to provide the shipment certificate of 65438+ 10. Our company insists that the bill of lading is normal and there is no need to provide proof. Therefore, the buyer hired a lawyer to check the captain's log on the cargo ship to prove that the date of the bill of lading was forged, and immediately filed a complaint with the local court based on the evidence taken away by the lawyer, and the court issued a notice of arrest of the ship. After four months of negotiations, we finally paid 20,900 pounds in compensation. The buyer will withdraw the appeal and close the case.
Case study:
It is illegal to countersign the bill of lading. Once it is discovered, the consequences will be very serious. However, in international trade, it is quite common to countersign bills of lading. Especially when the delay time is short, there are still many exporters who will take risks. When the date of backdating is long, it is easy to arouse the buyer's suspicion. Finally, it can be seen by consulting the captain's log book or liner timetable.