Hidden costs I - How to cleverly enquire a fine art shipment estimate

It has already happened to each of us – we enquired an estimate for a certain service, we received an estimate and still the final invoice turned out to be an unpleasant surprise. 

First rule, which is valid for all business branches: always compare the invoice with the estimate! If the total differs, it may not always mean that the vendor is trying to cheat on you. It may just be a miscommunication between the person who prepared the estimate and the one who issued the invoice. Or possibly there have been extra circumstandes. But in many cases the reason is the discrepancy between what each of you meant and what the other party of the transaction understood.

I would like to give you some hints on how to enquire estimates for fine art shipments in order to avoid dissapoinments upon receiving the final invoce. Or at least to have a solid base for a succesful reclamation :) 

• Before sending, think your enquiry over and decide what kind of service do you really need? If you are not sure, what the possible options are, ask your agent for advice.
• Always communicate in writing. Even, if some arrangements have to be talked over on the phone, write a short „to-sum-up” email – for the record. It may save you a lot of money, in case something goes wrong on the agent's side.
• Ask for itemised charges so that you exactly know what services are offered according to the estimate. Please note that there are some charges that cannot be 100 % reliably estimated, but the more exact the information you deliver, the more precise the enquired estimate should be. If it already occured that you were surprised by your agent's final charges, insist on getting the details of your enquiry (like dimensions, package, weights, deadlines etc.) noted directly in the estimate. It leaves less space for manipulation.
• Provide your agent with all the relevant details about art works, conditions and circumstances of the shipment. If anything changes, inform them immerdiately and ask for a revised estimate. Again, it leaves less space for manipulation while invoicing. There are of course unlucky coincidences and unexpected changes, but the lack of proper information, like wrong dimensions (!!!), is the most common reason for extra charges, so be careful and precise - it does matter!

Here examples of some less obvious situations, in which I had to bill extra charges to a client:

• A painting that our art movers came to collect from an artist's studio was still wet. They spent an extra half an hour building a provisory shadow box around it. Then, a transport frame had to be constructed, which significantly increased the volume of this art work and consequently also the air freight charges.
• An art work was to be collected from a backyard but the gate was too low for a truck to drive through. Art movers had to carry the collected art works or roll them on skates for several hundred meters. Extra time, extra effort.
• A client enquired an estimate for an export shipment of several art works not mentioning that some of them were bonded. Bonded items require a separate customs clearance, a transit paper and most often an on-site inspection at a customs office. This means ca. 300-400 EUR extra right away.
• A client enquired an estimate for an export shipment of several art works not mentioning that not all of them are being shipped by the same consignor. For each consignor a separate customs clearance has to be submitted, and thus my charges for customs clearance multiplied.
• A client enquired an estimate for a consolidated transport and then demanded a delivery on a certain day. Consolidaded transports are offered when one or several clients already cover most of the costs for a ride to a certain destination, and the one who pays the most, can determine the delivery date. That means, if you are not the one who pays the most, you have to wait for a suitable opportunity or look for another option.
• Our client was the loaner of an art work and the invoice payer but the lender was the one determining the terms. It turned out upon collection that the art work definitely needed to be packed in a more sophisticated way than enquired and estimated. The object was one of Tomas Saraceno's spider web works – an extremely fragile one: just a spider web span on a branch of a tree. The lender demanded a customised crate, cushioned with dark foam, so that the whitish web could be easily seen while handling. Whereas we found this requirement fully justified, the loaner absolutely refused to pay for the requested crate, accusing our art movers of being „unable to properly do their job” by means of soft-packing materials. It took forever to find a compromise and needless to say, our charges rose.
  This is a very common case among museum shipments. Often these are lenders, who demand expensive, exaggerated and often simply redundant solutions but in the example above it was our client, who neglected checking the details with the lender and then acted unfair towards all parties involved. Again – simply lack of accurate information.

As you see – precise information is crucial for us, agents, to prepare reliable charges, which can be invoiced 1 to 1 when the project is over. The next post will be about reading estimates with understanding and recognising hidden costs! XXX