Sev­er­al cus­tomers of ship­ping com­pa­ny Trin­ba­go Ex­press are rais­ing con­cerns over the abrupt clo­sure of its Trinidad branch­es and a lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­gard­ing un­de­liv­ered car­go.  

In June, Busi­ness Guardian spoke to irate cus­tomers of Trin­ba­go Ex­press T&T Ltd, as they had not re­ceived their bar­rels. They com­plained that the sit­u­a­tion had oc­curred since No­vem­ber 2024.  

The com­pa­ny, which op­er­ates un­der Trin­ba­go Ex­press Inc. in  T&T and Trin­ba­go Ex­press Ship­ping in Brook­lyn, New York, has re­port­ed­ly not re­spond­ed to cus­tomer calls or pro­vid­ed any for­mal up­dates since sus­pend­ing op­er­a­tions more than a month ago.   

Both its Cou­va and Port of Spain lo­ca­tions have re­mained shut­tered.  

One cus­tomer, who on­ly want­ed to be iden­ti­fied as Ms. Joseph, said she, along with  12 cus­tomers, went to the Port-of-Spain of­fice on Wednes­day. They met the doors closed.  

Guardian Me­dia spoke to a work­er at the Cou­va of­fice who was on­ly will­ing to say the of­fices will soon be re­opened, but did not give a time­frame.  

Joseph, shar­ing her or­deal, said she paid US$420 to Trin­ba­go Ex­press Ship­ping in New York in Jan­u­ary to ship a bar­rel of es­sen­tial house­hold and ba­by sup­plies. The items were picked up on Jan­u­ary 25 and were ini­tial­ly ex­pect­ed to ar­rive with­in three weeks.  

How­ev­er, they were not dis­patched un­til April 17, and to date, re­main un­col­lect­ed at the port in Trinidad.  

“I bought all my stuff. I re­cent­ly moved in­to a new place, and I have cur­tains, bed sheets, pil­low­cas­es, food, and every pos­si­ble thing. My daugh­ter has grown a lot since I bought this stuff. I have to now go back and buy prod­ucts for her skin, wipes, pam­pers, every pos­si­ble thing you can think about. So, yeah, we are be­ing told next week by New York, which is a big dis­ap­point­ment. And then sud­den­ly they closed the of­fice, and we didn’t hear any­thing from them,” she lament­ed. 

De­spite her at­tempts to re­trieve the ship­ment, Joseph said she was told by the ship­ping line and clear­ance agency that fees are still out­stand­ing, and that the con­tain­er can­not be re­leased un­til the com­pa­ny pays the nec­es­sary charges.  

Joseph claims that Pamela Lind­say, list­ed as the own­er of both Trin­ba­go Ex­press Inc. and Trin­ba­go Ex­press Ship­ping, al­leged that fi­nan­cial con­straints were be­hind the de­lays.  

“She told me it’s be­cause she switched to a new ship­ping line last De­cem­ber and that cost hun­dreds of thou­sands of US dol­lars,” the cus­tomer said.  

How­ev­er, cor­re­spon­dence from the own­er, Pamela Lind­say, and her rep­re­sen­ta­tives re­port­ed­ly at­tempt­ed to dis­tin­guish the U.S. and Trinidad branch­es as two sep­a­rate en­ti­ties, an as­ser­tion the cus­tomer dis­putes, stat­ing that Lind­say is list­ed as the own­er of both.  

An at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the cus­tomer is­sued a let­ter of de­mand, to which the com­pa­ny re­spond­ed by re­quest­ing an ex­ten­sion.  

“If I don’t get a sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sponse by Fri­day or Sat­ur­day, I’m pre­pared to re­tain a lawyer in New York and take le­gal ac­tion for breach of con­tract, emo­tion­al dis­tress, and men­tal an­guish,” the cus­tomer said.  

An­oth­er af­fect­ed cus­tomer is Rox­anne Julien, a Trinidad-born U.S. res­i­dent who has spent the last three months on the is­land try­ing to re­cov­er crit­i­cal med­ical sup­plies she shipped in May for her 84-year-old fa­ther, who un­der­went triple by­pass surgery.  

“Those box­es had every­thing he need­ed to re­cov­er in­clud­ing med­ical sup­plies, post-op es­sen­tials, and even a rent­ed hos­pi­tal bed was in­clud­ed. We were told it would ar­rive quick­ly. But every time we con­tact­ed the com­pa­ny, it was ‘next week,’” she stressed.  

Julien said her fam­i­ly had used the com­pa­ny for years with­out is­sue, but this time, si­lence and mis­in­for­ma­tion re­placed re­li­a­bil­i­ty. 

Julien said that due to the ship­ment not be­ing cleared from the port, her fam­i­ly was forced to re­pur­chase med­ical items lo­cal­ly at sig­nif­i­cant ex­pense to sup­port her fa­ther’s re­cov­ery.  

She al­so said she is part of a What­sApp group of 51 af­fect­ed cus­tomers, with an ad­di­tion­al 15 in a Face­book Mes­sen­ger group.  

Some users, she said, have es­ti­mat­ed that over 30 con­tain­ers are cur­rent­ly be­ing held at the port due to non-pay­ment of fees by Trin­ba­go Ex­press. 

The con­tain­ers re­port­ed­ly in­clude every­thing from com­mer­cial mer­chan­dise to wed­ding sup­plies to Eman­ci­pa­tion Day goods im­port­ed from Ghana. 

“There was a woman who lost her busi­ness; she shipped items to sell at the Eman­ci­pa­tion Ex­po. She’s now out thou­sands of dol­lars,” Julien said. 

An­oth­er cus­tomer had to bring wed­ding items back in suit­cas­es af­ter her con­tain­er failed to ar­rive be­fore the cer­e­mo­ny. 

Cus­tomers like Julien are call­ing for stronger con­sumer pro­tec­tion reg­u­la­tions, port ac­count­abil­i­ty, and in­ter­ven­tion from ship­ping au­thor­i­ties to pre­vent sim­i­lar cas­es. 

“At this point, it’s not just about get­ting our items. It’s about stop­ping this from hap­pen­ing to some­one else.” 

The af­fect­ed par­ties say they are now or­gan­is­ing more for­mal group ac­tion and pub­lic aware­ness cam­paigns to pre­vent fur­ther abuse of con­sumer trust. They al­so hope CMA Ship­ping, SeaLine, and the Port Au­thor­i­ty will con­sid­er rep­u­ta­tion­al risks and as­sist in fa­cil­i­tat­ing con­tain­er re­leas­es where pos­si­ble. 

While an­oth­er dis­ap­point­ed cus­tomer, 71-year-old Claude Bee­room, said Trin­ba­go Ex­press picked up his bar­rel on June 7, at Lin­coln Place in Brook­lyn, with the promise to de­liv­er be­tween three and four weeks in Trinidad.  

Bee­room said on Ju­ly 7, he vis­it­ed the of­fice in Port of Spain and was told by the agent that there was no pa­per­work there for him. 

 “I called the New York of­fice and was told that my bar­rel ar­rived in Trinidad on Ju­ly 1 but is wait­ing for Cus­toms to clear. I vis­it­ed the Port of Spain of­fice again on Ju­ly 11, 14, 18, 21, and 25, and I still have no pa­per­work. I called the New York Of­fice, and they keep telling me that they are still wait­ing for Cus­toms to clear the con­tain­er. I found out from a per­son that I met at the of­fice about the sit­u­a­tion that we’re in.” 

The re­tiree in­di­cat­ed that he is liv­ing with di­a­betes and high blood pres­sure and doesn’t take chances with his health.  

Like many oth­ers man­ag­ing chron­ic ill­ness­es, he re­lies on es­sen­tial health sup­plies pur­chased abroad to main­tain his qual­i­ty of life. But get­ting these items from the US to Trinidad af­ford­ably and re­li­ably? That’s where Trin­ba­go Ex­press T&T Ltd stepped in. 

“I can’t al­ways get the med­ical sup­plies I need here, and when I do it’s just too ex­pen­sive. So twice a year, I fly up to New York to shop for what I need,” he said. “But I still de­pend on Trin­ba­go Ex­press to ship the rest,” Bee­room added. 

Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian con­tact­ed the com­pa­ny’s own­er Pamela Lind­say, who said that she was in a meet­ing and could have on­ly do the in­ter­view on Sat­ur­day. 

Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion re­sponse in June 

The Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) said it is aware of the mat­ter.   

“Note that Trin­ba­go Ex­press T&T is not a mem­ber of our As­so­ci­a­tion and there­fore we are un­able to val­i­date the is­sues be­ing re­port­ed at this time. Please note that we have con­tact­ed the com­pa­ny in ques­tion and have not re­ceived a re­sponse thus far. We sug­gest that the per­sons af­fect­ed can re­port this mat­ter to the Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism,” SATT dis­closed.