Rogue forwarder swindles small logistics companies

There is a rogue forwarding company operating in Durban, FTW has been told, swindling companies that have contracted them for forwarding jobs out of huge sums of money. In one case, a small logistics company which last October outsourced forwarding business to this black sheep, paid over a quarter of a million rand up-front. But, while the rogue company took the money, it didn’t do the job. Numerous phone calls were made to recover the cash, and a personal call was made in December, but to no avail – the money was never repaid. This almost resulted in the innocent business having to be closed. FTW heard of a similar case from a trading company, which also made bookings through the miscreant company – “because it gets favourable rates”, we were told. But again, no job done, and the money quietly disappearing. “We phoned him a million times to try to get our cash back,” said our trading company contact. “But he eventually got quite rude, and we never saw a cent of it.” Although we have been unable to confirm anything from contacts at the shipping lines, this dodgy company also apparently owes some of the big lines lots of money. While the culprit company is still happily operating, we are also led to believe that legal action is under way.