Another "lesson" learned...

Our shipment left on Tuesday as did my stress about it.  It was packed well, picked up, and on its way to Qatar.  Cut. And. Dry.

Or so we thought.  We've been working with a shipping company in Doha for months getting all the details arranged.  We had the price per KG, details that we needed for items the could/couldn't be packed, insurance information, pick up Stateside and in Qatar information, and all of our paperwork was in.  We've been working on this for MONTHS.  We are allowed 400 KG (880 lbs) plus whatever we want to pay for in addition (about $4 per lb).  We weighed every box and kept meticulous records of everything.  We figured we'd owe about $500 extra on our shipment and were happy with what we were able to pack.

You can imagine our surprise when we woke up Thursday morning to an e-mail informing us that our shipment was 761 KG!  That's about exactly 300 KG more than we'd packed.  We were obviously shocked at the weight and the bill of over $6K...  (we were expecting $4K, of which we would only owe about $500)  We were also concerned at another message from her saying that rules on insurance has change and they could no longer offer us total coverage; basically our shipment is only covered if the ENTIRE thing is lost...  A sent a message to our contact in Doha asking if we could Skype to clear up the discrepancy.

He was able to Skype with her shortly after and she explained that they charge one of two ways.  Either they charge by weight or size, whichever is greater.  The size of our shipment was greater, so we were charged up..  What?!????  I packed the boxes light (almost all under 40 lbs) to save whoever was moving them the strain of heavy boxes.  Apparently it was in the fine print..  The insurance could not be helped.. all Qatari insurance companies have changed their coverage just this week...  (Just our luck..)

Ugh...  I guess we can chalk it up to a learning experience...  There isn't anything else we can do, the shipment is still gone, we can't change it now.  If you are moving/shipping, please please please ask if they charge by weight/size or both! 

I'm not laughing yet, but maybe some day I'll laugh at our most recent "learning" experience.