Report: U.S. retailers have $300 million credit with ocean freight carriers

Washington, D.C. – U.S. retailers reportedly have $300 million in refunds with ocean freight vendors, yet they are unaware of this because of invoice errors by their ocean freight transportation providers. According to a report from ocean freight auditing service Ocean Audit, problems with infrastructure of ocean freight carriers are also part of the issue.



Ocean Audit data indicates that manually-driven processes, which include invoicing, have an adverse effect on the accuracy of pricing for more than 40 million containers that are shipped annually to the U.S. More than 12% of all ocean freight invoices are reportedly defective.



“U.S. retail companies have been paying overcharges to ocean freight vendors for decades,” said Steve Fereirra, president of Ocean Audit. “This is due to them not having robust controls in place to audit and identify these errors. Without preventive measures in place, these overcharges will continue to cost U.S. retailers millions of dollars in lost profits each year. To make matters worse, consumers end up bearing the brunt of these overages when they make purchases because retailers have no choice but to increase the in-store or e-shop retail price to ensure each imported product is profitable.”