Certificate of Inspection and How It’s Used

In a recent post I noted the need for Certificate of Inspection to guarantee you / the importer will get the quantity as well as quality of the goods shipped. In practice the Certificate of Inspection is widely used. For example an importer of orchids or other flowers may request his inspector to perform an inspection of the shipment before the cargo is put on board of the flight that is to bring it to the final destination country.

The inspector makes sure the flowers are in perfect order, not wilted, or similar, and signs the Certificate of Inspection. When your bank receives the documents and sees the signed Certificate of Inspection, it pays the draft and releases the documents to you to clear the customs. Similarly an importer of fruit can use Certificate of Inspection in his product line. When I was importing one-of-a-kind architectural artifacts or furnishings, I would take detailed photographs of all my purchases.

Unable to wait around until my container would be packed I would leave the point of origin but contract with an inspection company to perform inspection and oversee the packing of my container making sure that only the very pieces that were my hand-selected items would be packed into the container and no possible substitutes . The detailed photographic documentation of all my purchases was absolutely instrumental in guaranteeing me, the importer, that I would get what I selected to buy.

If my inspector suspected that a piece was not the one I had approved, he would not sign the Certificate of Inspection document and the packing of the container at shipper’s warehouse was halted until my approval; if any one specific piece might had been missing or suspect as not being the original piece I selected, the item was taken off the invoice and the Letter of Credit was amended.

• ← Import Export Financing: Documentary Draft for Collection
• Import Shipments Entry Process through US Customs →