With a $950,000 fine and an agreement to reimburse costs in a detention and demurrage case that goes back to 2021, Taiwan’s Wan Hai Lines has become the most recent carrier to experience the wrath of the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) in Washington, DC.
Wan Hai invoiced a customer at least 21 times in the spring of 2021 for detention charges when the carrier “either offered no return locations, the designated terminal was not accepting the containers’ chassis, or appointments were unavailable for the subject containers,” according to the FMC’s order of investigation and hearing. The client asked Wan Hai for a waiver and delivered screenshots proving these limitations. The plea for a fee waiver was rejected by Wan Hai because it “does not control the appointment.”
