Hey,

I am pretty new to this but having recently brought the bikes home via airfreight I now need to get them out of Heathrow and back to Northern Ireland.

I started off getting a quote to bring the (crated) bikes home via road. Then I got a call this morning to say the roadfreight company would not be able to collect them til they clear customs. They are both UK registered so you would have thought this would be easy...

Now the interesting bit is that the cargo handling warehouse have seen the carnet mentioned on the air waybill. They want that to pass the bikes through customs and back into UK but also said carnet is not normally valid for the UK. I could not understand why they'd want to stamp the carnet in for the bikes when they are UK bikes to begin with.

After going round in some more circles I spoke with customs clearing agents for the air/sea division of the road freight company. Now they also want the carnet (with me at home) to pass through customs but have mentioned the last page (certificate of location) to prove the bikes came home. To me this page is only if you failed to get the bike stamped out of somewhere else. Having said that if it made them happy...

Anyone ever cleared bikes out of Heathrow before? I am thinking of flying back there and attempting it myself at this stage. Is there a customs office there that I'd take all the paperwork to? Looks like the airline will start charging storage fees very soon

Neil

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Belfast to Kathmandu on a Diesel motorbike 2010/11 www.suckindiesel.com