Af­ter months of cus­tomer frus­tra­tion and spec­u­la­tion, Trin­ba­go Ex­press founder and CEO Pamela Lind­say has ad­dressed cus­tomers’ con­cerns, out­lin­ing the se­ries of events that led to wide­spread car­go de­lays and pledg­ing swift res­o­lu­tion and per­son­al ac­count­abil­i­ty.

How­ev­er, some cus­tomers are not buy­ing her sto­ry, say­ing they have heard it be­fore.

Speak­ing in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view, Lind­say ad­mit­ted that a “per­fect storm” of lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges, in­clud­ing de­mur­rage fees, port con­ges­tion and in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps, cre­at­ed a sit­u­a­tion “un­prece­dent­ed” in the com­pa­ny’s 28-year his­to­ry.

“We ful­ly un­der­stand the frus­tra­tion our cus­tomers and their fam­i­lies have felt,” Lind­say said. “This be­gan last No­vem­ber and has tak­en far too long to re­solve. But let me be clear, we are not fil­ing for bank­rupt­cy, and we are not aban­don­ing our cus­tomers.”

Ac­cord­ing to Lind­say, the sit­u­a­tion start­ed with de­lays at the New York port due to a back­log of con­tain­ers and high rental fees. Though the port charges were even­tu­al­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed, a sig­nif­i­cant de­mur­rage fee from a France-based ship­ping line fur­ther de­layed clear­ance.

“It was an ex­or­bi­tant fig­ure in US dol­lars,” Lind­say said, de­clin­ing to give the ex­act amount but con­firm­ing it was in the tens of thou­sands. “This was dead mon­ey. We couldn’t pass that on to our cus­tomers. We had to ab­sorb it.”

She em­pha­sised that com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the ship­ping line’s head of­fice were slow and bu­reau­crat­ic, but af­ter weeks of ne­go­ti­a­tions, a pay­ment arrange­ment was fi­nal­ly reached. Lind­say says con­tain­ers have be­gun mov­ing, and cus­tomers can ex­pect de­liv­ery to re­sume this week.

Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters was the tem­po­rary clo­sure of the Trinidad of­fice, which Lind­say says was an in­ter­nal de­ci­sion tak­en by lo­cal man­age­ment. She clar­i­fied that it is not per­ma­nent and that op­er­a­tions in Trinidad would re­sume.

“Cus­tomers were left in the dark, and I un­der­stand their con­cern. But the of­fice will re­open. That was nev­er in ques­tion.”

Lind­say in­di­cat­ed that cus­tomers would know by the end of the week or the fol­low­ing week when all out­stand­ing ship­ments would be avail­able.  

“We have to now work with the re­spec­tive ports to see how fast cus­tomers will be able to get ap­point­ments to clear their goods. I have start­ed to put things in place, but you al­so have to be re­al­is­tic, bear­ing in mind that we now have to work with the re­spec­tive ports with re­spect to the un­stuff­ing and ap­point­ment dates, fac­tor­ing in that the ports are still work­ing by ap­point­ments on­ly.”

She al­so dis­missed spec­u­la­tion that Trin­ba­go Ex­press was split­ting in­to sep­a­rate com­pa­nies in New York and Trinidad, call­ing it “com­plete­ly un­true.”  

Lind­say con­firmed that the com­pa­ny op­er­ates as a sin­gle en­ti­ty, with its To­ba­go car­go han­dled by long-time part­ner LAJ En­ter­pris­es.

Lind­say fre­quent­ly refers to her clients as “friends” and cites decades of trust built through good­will and flex­i­ble ser­vice mod­els. She re­vealed that Trin­ba­go Ex­press rou­tine­ly ships car­go with­out up­front pay­ment, based on cus­tomer re­la­tion­ships, a mod­el she ad­mits may have con­tributed to the com­pa­ny’s cur­rent cash flow chal­lenges.

“Some of our cus­tomers don’t have the funds up­front, and we al­low them to pay lat­er. Many do, some don’t. But that’s the kind of ser­vice we’ve built over the years.”

She al­so cit­ed mul­ti­ple in­stances of com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ships, in­clud­ing schol­ar­ships, free ship­ping for char­i­ta­ble caus­es, and sup­port for homes such as the Cyril Ross Chil­dren’s  Home for Chil­dren.

The com­pa­ny has come un­der fire on so­cial me­dia, with claims of mis­man­age­ment, miss­ing goods, and even ru­mours of bank­rupt­cy. Lind­say was adamant in her re­but­tal:

“There is ab­solute­ly no bank­rupt­cy. We have paid the port. No con­tain­ers are be­ing auc­tioned. These are false­hoods, and while I un­der­stand the emo­tions, peo­ple need to have the facts.”

She not­ed that, de­spite neg­a­tive at­ten­tion, many loy­al cus­tomers have cre­at­ed In­sta­gram and Face­book pages in sup­port of Trin­ba­go Ex­press, high­light­ing years of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice and ded­i­ca­tion.

With con­tain­ers now be­ing cleared and car­go set to be dis­trib­uted, Lind­say said all com­plaints of dam­age or loss will be ad­dressed on a case-by-case ba­sis. Cus­tomers with per­ish­able or sea­son­al items, some shipped as ear­ly as Jan­u­ary, are ad­vised to con­tact the com­pa­ny di­rect­ly.

“Take pic­tures, call us, and we’ll deal with you per­son­al­ly. I give out my pri­vate num­ber. Cus­tomers know they can reach me even if I can’t an­swer right away, I al­ways try to get back.”

Lind­say ad­mits that trust has been erod­ed among some cus­tomers, but says her team is com­mit­ted to re­build­ing it.

“This is not some­thing we planned. It’s been deeply un­for­tu­nate. But we will do every­thing in our pow­er to make it right. All we ask is for a lit­tle grace, a lit­tle em­pa­thy. No sit­u­a­tion is for­ev­er. Please put it big and bold. I sin­cere­ly apol­o­gise to every cus­tomer af­fect­ed. From the bot­tom of my heart, I am sor­ry.”

As the com­pa­ny works to clear its back­log and re­turn to nor­mal­cy, Lind­say hopes the com­bi­na­tion of trans­paren­cy, cus­tomer ser­vice, and long-stand­ing com­mu­ni­ty ties will be enough to steer Trin­ba­go Ex­press through this storm.

A cus­tomer, who on­ly want­ed to be iden­ti­fied as Ms. Joseph, re­spond­ing to Lind­say’s com­ment on CNC3 Busi­ness Watch on Mon­day night, ac­knowl­edged that cus­tomers are al­lowed to ship and then pay.

How­ev­er, Ms Joseph said her US$420 was paid in ad­vance and stat­ed that if the com­pa­ny is not fi­nan­cial­ly equipped to pro­vide this ser­vice, then don’t.  

Al­so, the cus­tomer said high de­mur­rage fees Lind­say re­ferred to were at­trib­uted to the length of time cus­tomers’ items were on the port.  

“We were false­ly no­ti­fied by her rep­re­sen­ta­tives, who in­formed us that the of­fices will re­open on Mon­day, Au­gust 18, and dur­ing the said week, all cus­tomers will be con­tact­ed as out­stand­ing fees were com­plete­ly paid. I was in­formed by a rep­re­sen­ta­tive in New York that Ms. Lind­say will con­tact me yes­ter­day (Wednes­day)  to ex­plain the sit­u­a­tion. I have ab­solute­ly no faith in their word as she has failed to re­turn my call on count­less oc­ca­sions,” she lament­ed.

Joseph added that if the com­pa­ny does not com­pen­sate her, she will re­tain an at­tor­ney in New York.

An­oth­er cus­tomer, Rox­anne Julien, said every­one con­tin­ues to be hope­ful that this time Pamela Lind­sey will ac­tu­al­ly keep her word and re­lease their con­tain­ers.  

“The CEO has con­sis­tent­ly stat­ed each week that the mat­ter would be re­solved the fol­low­ing week. This on­go­ing pat­tern has con­tin­ued with­out any con­crete ac­tion or pay­ment, lead­ing us to con­clude that it is un­like­ly the de­mur­rage fees will be paid any­time soon,” Julien stressed.

While an­oth­er dis­ap­point­ed cus­tomer, Claude Bee­room, ex­pressed deep skep­ti­cism:

“She’s been say­ing ‘next week’ since Jan­u­ary. Every time it’s the same sto­ry. Peo­ple are just tired of the lies.”

Be­room al­so ques­tioned the com­pa­ny’s nar­ra­tive sur­round­ing high de­mur­rage fees, sug­gest­ing the charges may have re­sult­ed from in­ter­nal mis­man­age­ment.

“If you know how ship­ping works, then you’d know those de­mur­rage fees don’t just ap­pear; they come when con­tain­ers sit too long. That’s on her.”

De­spite this, the cus­tomer ad­mit­ted to still hop­ing for a res­o­lu­tion, al­beit with lit­tle con­fi­dence that de­liv­ery promis­es will be met in the stat­ed time frame.