Customs to reject late SEDs

By Staff -- Logistics Management, 10/1/2000

Effective Nov. 1, the U.S. Customs Service will no longer accept faxed or late Shippers Export Declarations (SEDs). That decision is part of the agency's push to get shippers to file SEDs electronically through the Automated Export System (AES).

The original deadline was Aug. 4, but the agency delayed implementation. According to a report in the newsletter Managing Exports, published by the Institute of Management and Administration, carriers asked the agency for the later date. In exchange, they agreed to provide Customs with contact information for clients that were still filing paper documents and to provide links to AES on their Web sites, the newsletter said.

Customs reportedly has been more aggressively fining ocean carriers that submit late documents. In the past, carriers typically absorbed the cost of those fines, but now a number of them are passing those fines on to shippers.