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Thursday, July 17, 2025

No relief in sight for shipping company’s customers

...as­so­ci­a­tion says re­port mat­ter to Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion

by

Andrea Perez-Sobers
21 days ago
20250625

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Cus­tomers are irate with Trin­ba­go Ex­press T&T Ltd as they have not re­ceived their bar­rels from as far back as No­vem­ber 2024, while some have since sought le­gal ac­tion. 

Sev­er­al of them have been vis­it­ing the com­pa­ny’s of­fice at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza Court­yard on Rich­mond Street in Port of Spain for months on­ly to be told why their items can­not be col­lect­ed from the Port of Port of Spain. Over 60 cus­tomers are be­ing af­fect­ed. 

Ma­ri­na Mak­oul Tuck­er, who is a To­bag­on­ian re­sid­ing in Brook­lyn, said that she and her sis­ter are build­ing a prop­er­ty in To­ba­go and in No­vem­ber last year, they sent con­tain­ers with items in it along with school items to be do­nat­ed to chil­dren in need, along with can­dy for Christ­mas to be shared. 

Tuck­er said in all it was eight con­tain­ers and eight box­es and to date she has seen none. 

“Every day it is a sto­ry and when you go to the ship­ping com­pa­ny, they’re still re­ceiv­ing stuff. This can­not be go­ing on so long with no an­swers. I went sev­er­al times to Trin­ba­go Ex­press on Lib­er­ty Av­enue in New York and what is said is that the prob­lem is not from the Unit­ed States to the US, but from the US to Trinidad. I have reached out to the own­er, Pamela Lind­say, and she has no an­swer for this se­ri­ous back­log,” Mak­oul Tuck­er lament­ed. 

Mak­oul Tuck­er said she went to court in Brook­lyn and filed a law­suit on June 11 as Lind­say, who is al­so To­bag­on­ian, has been get­ting away for far too long and jus­tice must be served. How­ev­er, the court said this week that the own­ers of the com­pa­ny have not re­spond­ed. 

“Per­ish­able things have been dam­aged.  I sent elec­tri­cal, like my lights and stuff for my prop­er­ty and I had to now pay the elec­tri­cian to go to Trinidad to buy them and bring them up for my build­ing. A lot of peo­ple al­so com­plained of items be­ing spoiled. Now all this is hap­pen­ing, who is go­ing to re­im­burse us? It is al­leged that the com­pa­ny is in fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, but that is not our prob­lem, we need our con­tain­ers.”

One of the is­sues Mak­oul Tuck­er al­so point­ed out was that when the ship­ment gets to Trinidad it takes five to six weeks to reach To­ba­go as enough car­go needs to be on the ves­sel to head to the is­land. She said that this needs to be rec­ti­fied as To­ba­go should have its own deep­wa­ter har­bour. 

The frus­trat­ed woman in­di­cat­ed that To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief  Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine had spo­ken to one of the own­ers due to sev­er­al com­plaints he re­ceived and made a deal with her to start to move this stuff off the port. 

“Some peo­ple have start­ed re­ceiv­ing their com­mer­cial bins and con­tain­ers but there is still a ma­jor back­log and no prop­er ex­pla­na­tion.” 

Her sis­ter Anne Mak­oul shipped on No­vem­ber 6, and on Jan­u­ary 5, and to date noth­ing. 

 “I keep get­ting a run around that the items are leav­ing Trinidad and go­ing up to To­ba­go week­end. This has been go­ing on for sev­er­al months and must stop.” 

One woman, who did not wish to be named, said she had two com­mer­cial bins with ba­by items which were shipped since Jan­u­ary 25. “I was told that these box­es would ar­rive with­in three to four weeks and we would have paid to ex­pe­dite the ship­ping. We would have paid ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$420. Giv­en the na­ture of the items in the box, this amount was paid to en­sure that my new­born ba­by’s items ar­rive here with­in three to four weeks be­cause, as we all know, chil­dren grow very quick­ly.

“To date, I can­not re­ceive these items and have to buy every­thing such as di­a­pers, ba­by wipes, med­ica­tion, and vi­t­a­mins in T&T.” 

The woman said every time she calls the Port of Spain of­fice, she is told that there is a back­log on the Port or with the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion. When she en­quired, she was told that that was not true. 

She told Busi­ness Guardian she called the Port of Spain of­fice re­cent­ly to ex­press his frus­tra­tion over the con­tin­u­ous dance around. They re­ceived an email from the su­per­vi­sor which stat­ed “As per my con­ver­sa­tion that I had with your hus­band via tele­phone and in per­son, l would like to in­form you that I have reached out to my New York of­fice re­gard­ing some sort of re­dress for your de­layed ship­ment.

“Please note that I was in­formed that up­on ar­rival of your car­go the New York of­fice will con­tact you to dis­cuss a way for­ward. Please note that I am await­ing a new ar­rival date from the ship­ping line. Our con­tain­ers will be in the coun­try, rest as­sured that I will re­vert all rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion about the same as soon as it be­comes avail­able, I do apol­o­gise for the in­con­ve­nience caused.” 

The woman has since hired an at­tor­ney who has sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the own­er.

An­oth­er irate cus­tomer Karen Samuel said she was told that her bar­rels were col­lect­ed from New York on April 22 and the ves­sel would sail on April 30 to To­ba­go. 

“Yes­ter­day I found out it was shipped on May 20 and ar­rived on June 1. I don’t know what to be­lieve in this com­pa­ny. I am tired of call­ing and ask­ing when I will get my stuff. The lo­cal com­pa­ny is say­ing there might be four con­tain­ers in front of mine,” Samuel said.

Busi­ness Guardian called the com­pa­ny’s head of­fice on Tues­day and the woman who an­swered said, “When the con­tain­er is at the port the af­fect­ed cus­tomers will be con­tact­ed.” 

Pressed fur­ther as to why there was a back­log since No­vem­ber, the woman said she could re­spond to such a ques­tion. 

Busi­ness Guardian con­tact­ed the com­pa­ny’s ac­coun­tant, Steppe Bar­clay, sev­er­al times and sent a mes­sage via What­sApp but he did not re­spond. 

Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion re­sponse 

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. 


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