Has anyone sussed out how buying from the EU will work?

[themadhippy]

In France refusals to quote have trebled and in Germany doubled as they run out of UK forwarders having the paperwork capability to provide return loads. They don't want trucks stuck in Kent and their drivers are refusing to endure Third World conditions of hunger and zero sanitation. We may need to pay them danger money and extra for one-way trips which could make importing expensive.

or the drivers drop the trailer off at the port to be picked up the other side,no need then for drivers to enter hostile territory

[Cerbertech]

Studiospares move has meant more local to me - great for last minute and broken stuff but a smaller trade counter style operation, no more bargain corner of ex-demo bits going cheap (reminds me I still have a sub stage box to finish from the old store). The staff did not all transfer and are not now as knowledgeable either, the warehouse also acts as the website fulfilment.

[ImagineerTom]

Drop off / unaccompanied loads - all that solves is the driver being stuck in another country. You can’t just dump a trailer and run; they still won’t let you in to the port parking lot to drop the trailer off unless it has all the necessary paperwork for the journey and has a booked in company to collect it the other side (unaccompanied trucks parked at Holyhead have a daily parking fee of something like £1000) plus that all happens with the same entry gate so if there’s backlog at the port with RO-RO the drop loads are stuck in the same delays as everyone else.

 

There’s also tricky legal / liability issues with dropped loads with regards to damage & claims. If it’s stayed hitched to one cab from end to end there’s one place to claim, if it’s done one cab to a port, several shunts within the port to load it on/off the ferry and then a third company to take it to Birmingham who do you claim against if when you open the lorry the contents are damaged or the chiller/freezer has stopped working?

[itiba]

........ my consistent point has been "You will not be able point to a single case in E&W where a claim failed in the circumstances you describe."

Are you perhaps missing the point that however well (some) insurers may have reacted in the past (which as we all know "is another country"), from tonight they have every right to demand adherence to a whole world of "standards" which do not yet exist? Whatever the theory may be, Tom seems to be patiently describing one of the realities of this brave new world.

 

I accept that insurance companies have "every right to demand adherence to a whole world of "standards"" the area of contention is how insurance companies approach verification of compliance in the event of a claim. Unfortunately the method proposed simple isn't how it works.

 

It is not a new issue as we've always been able to import items of different standards. Eg an American product or a Chinese product. The courts in this country have never approached such a problem in the proposed bizarre reverse burden of proof way.

 

We keep swerving off in different directions but I repeat the issue is "how insurance companies approach verification of compliance in the event of a claim" which is not and never has been in the way described.

 

[ImagineerTom]

how insurance companies approach verification of compliance in the event of a claim" which is not and never has been in the way described.

 

And yet that is what our insurers are telling us is what they expect to be doing going forward and warn us to take remedial (and expensive) actions so that we don’t suffer as a result?

 

And the high court / appeals court business interruption case all came about because of insurance companies grasping at a very very thin straw in the way you keep saying won’t happen again.

 

And of course the problem is not that there’s a new set of protocols and requirement. The problem is that insurance policies require we comply with legislation standards and protocols that currently aren’t defined or clarified, arbited and enforced by testers and regulatory schemes that currently don’t exist in a framework of absolutely no one knowing what the actual rules are thus making it, by definition, impossible to fully comply and thus creating a huge grey area that insurance companies will try to exploit if it saves them serious money.

Edited December 31, 2020 by ImagineerTom

[Junior8]

There's also tricky legal / liability issues with dropped loads with regards to damage & claims. If it's stayed hitched to one cab from end to end there's one place to claim, if it's done one cab to a port, several shunts within the port to load it on/off the ferry and then a third company to take it to Birmingham who do you claim against if when you open the lorry the contents are damaged or the chiller/freezer has stopped working?

 

Unaccompanied trailers have been going backwards and forwards for years indeed until 2020's dislocation Brittany Ferries were proposing a new rail based unaccompanied trailer service from near the Franco/Spanish border to Cherbourg using the Lohr system.

Edited January 1, 2021 by Junior8

[ImagineerTom]

oh I know that - we have used the system occasionally ourselves; I was just trying to explain why that's not a universal solution to the problem as it adds costs and risks in certain types of load.

[kerry davies]

Pure speculation so read with care. Last night 18 accompanied trucks drove into Holyhead for the post midnight ferry and 6 were turned away for having incorrect paperwork. What happens to unaccompanied loads that are necessarily parked up awaiting ferry space? Will they need to check in paperwork with the authorities in advance and if so who ties those papers to the load that is being put on the ferry at some indeterminate future point?

 

Nobody has had to do this before so the systems have to be created. An example is a friend in Wexford who is home from his English university went this morning to watch a boxset on Amazon Prime he "bought" last week. Because the UK government has turned a blind eye to services there is now no UK streaming service available in Ireland. How they will differentiate North and South is another matter but I can see it making freight forwarding IT for the EU a potential nightmare.

 

A deal that has more pages than War and Peace, passed in 5 hours is going to be a long time in the untangling. Nobody in Westminster can possibly have the faintest idea of what they voted for.

[ImagineerTom]

Unaccompanied loads have to have a unique identifying number clearly visible so that they can be tracked properly and not just “the green lorry” The mechanics of tying paperwork to the trailer isn’t an issue in port and every hgv trailer also has a serial number / chassis number the are globally unique so keeping track of which physical trailer has been used and stopping the old cliche of “stealing wheelbarrows” can’t happen either.

 

Of course your broader point is valid - these systems have previously just been used by a couple of companies sending unaccompanied trailers out of the EU so although there’s processes to follow scaling them up will bring problems.

[itiba]

how insurance companies approach verification of compliance in the event of a claim" which is not and never has been in the way described.

 

And yet that is what our insurers are telling us is what they expect to be doing going forward and warn us to take remedial (and expensive) actions so that we don't suffer as a result?

 

And the high court / appeals court business interruption case all came about because of insurance companies grasping at a very very thin straw in the way you keep saying won't happen again.

 

And of course the problem is not that there's a new set of protocols and requirement. The problem is that insurance policies require we comply with legislation standards and protocols that currently aren't defined or clarified, arbited and enforced by testers and regulatory schemes that currently don't exist in a framework of absolutely no one knowing what the actual rules are thus making it, by definition, impossible to fully comply and thus creating a huge grey area that insurance companies will try to exploit if it saves them serious money.

 

It's regretful the issue of the Business Interruption test case (ie clarifying the parameters of an insurable event that has not occurred in over 100 years) has polluted discussion of how insurance companies approach verification of compliance in the event of a claim (ie insurable events that occur on a day-to-day basis). Two distinct issues that those who can identify nuance will appreciate. Might I suggest a more apt comparison is:"You can't prove your brakes were working when the car crashed"Or"You can't prove that light would pass a PAT test when it caught fire"Which are both examples of statements that could never succeed in a English or Welsh court as a defence to preventing an insurance claim.

 

 

[Stuart91]

"You can't prove your brakes were working when the car crashed"Or"You can't prove that light would pass a PAT test when it caught fire"

 

These are both good examples of the principle that a test is only as good as the moment it takes place.

 

However, if your car has an expired MOT when you crash, you can expect your insurers to leverage that.

 

The problem that Tom's referring to with his tents is that the law of the land (as it now stands) doesn't automatically provide recognition for the tests and calculations that have been done by continental countries. Brexit has not changed the laws of physics, so the tents are as safe as they were before. But an insurer can now claim that there is no valid test or certification in place, which in the strictest legal sense would be correct.

 

The insurers are obliged to act in the best interests of their shareholders, not their policyholders, so if they can avoid paying out, they will.

[itiba]

 

(1) However, if your car has an expired MOT when you crash, you can expect your insurers to leverage that.

 

(2) The problem that Tom's referring to with his tents is that the law of the land (as it now stands) doesn't automatically provide recognition for the tests and calculations that have been done by continental countries. Brexit has not changed the laws of physics, so the tents are as safe as they were before. But an insurer can now claim that there is no valid test or certification in place, which in the strictest legal sense would be correct.

 

(3) The insurers are obliged to act in the best interests of their shareholders, not their policyholders, so if they can avoid paying out, they will.

 

(1) That's because there's a material difference between the following two questions:a - At the time of the insurable event was there a valid MOT certificate?b - At the time of the insurable event would the brakes have complied with an MOT?

Ignoring that an MOT is a statuary mandated test were an insurable event to occur where a vehicle were to answer yes to A and no to B then the issue returns to 'how insurance companies approach verification of compliance in the event of a claim'. In which the burden of proof rears it's head.

 

(2) if the insurers name a specific test or standard then yes. We are talking about the grey area where such a test or standard isn't named. This results in the burden of proof applying to any claim.

(3) The best of interest of shareholders would also include complying with regulatory standards

 

[Stuart91]

(2) if the insurers name a specific test or standard then yes. We are talking about the grey area where such a test or standard isn't named. This results in the burden of proof applying to any claim.

 

The problem is that certification which was perfectly valid a few days ago, now isn't.

Businesses (already stretched by the pandemic) are going to be facing the cost of getting equipment re-certified by UK companies, simply because the law no longer recognises the qualifications of the continental engineers who issued the original certification.

 

Under the current situation, it seems that you could argue in court that a tent had no legal certification, despite any amount issued by foreign manufacturers. That would certainly shift the burden of proof somewhat. A court might choose to take foreign certification into account, but they would not be obliged to.

 

(3) The best of interest of shareholders would also include complying with regulatory standards

 

True, and you could also argue that shafting too many customers is not going to be good for the shareholders' long-term interests. But when everything is driven by the quarterly results cycle, I think it'd be unwise to count on any altruism from them.

[Junior8]

Under the current situation, it seems that you could argue in court that a tent had no legal certification, despite any amount issued by foreign manufacturers. That would certainly shift the burden of proof somewhat. A court might choose to take foreign certification into account, but they would not be obliged to.

 

It seems to me that you could argue quite plausibly that validity of any professional opinion cannot be invalidated by the stroke of a pen since if nothing else the data that backs that opinion. is part of the history of the structure. A court would be obliged to take account of any evidence presented by a defendant as part of their case and test it as they would any other data. Just as last year they would have tested the evidence of any legally valid certificate in the case of an accident.

 

What an insurer demands of course is entirely up to the underwriters...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[kerry davies]

It is not "certification" it is a legally mandated standard where the legal authority ceases to exist. It is pure Catch 22, you can't insure the tent unless it complies with a law that no longer applies or exists in the UK. There is no mention of equivalence or conformity in the Act to satisfy the hatreds of the right wing toward EU law.

 

Let's talk fire extinguishers, shall we? Last week a UK manufacturer was legally bound to stamp a CE mark on them all. Today he still does that if he sells to the EU which does not accept the UKCA mark he is mandated to use in the UK. If he sells it in Northern Ireland he has to use the UKNI mark to avoid CE and alerting the ERG to the reality that NI is still in the EU. However an EU manufacturer, where they don't recognise the UKCA mark, will continue to use only the CE mark wherever he sells. This will all be sorted out by January 2022 :** laughs out loud **: but even then a theatre company touring just inside the British Isles has a problem.

 

Will their insurer accept the CE mark which no longer has the legal backing of the ECJ in the UK or will it accept the UKNI or UKCA marks which the EU do not recognise or will they need separate insurances for UK, NI and RoI? How will licensing officers (That's supposed to have a UKNI mark! ) interpret it all? Now scale it all up to tents where the UK and NI have no equivalent standards to judge from.

Edited January 3, 2021 by kerry davies