Payment policy
How your payment is protected.
The risk in this trade is not the equipment. It is sending money to a company you have never met, in a country you have never been to, and then waiting. This page is our answer to that, written as policy rather than reassurance, so you can hold us to it.
The sequence, every order
A written proforma first
You receive a proforma invoice carrying the full specification, the price, the Incoterm, the lead time and the list of documents you will be given. It is valid 14 days. Nothing is ordered from any plant until you have signed it and returned it.
50 percent deposit, against a signed proforma
Half on order confirmation. It funds the build, and we would rather say that plainly than dress it up: it is working money, not money parked in an account. What protects it is the inspection gate below, not our word.
You nominate the inspector
Before anything is loaded, an independent inspector chosen by you attends the plant, inspects the goods against your signed proforma, witnesses the load test and issues a report with photographs. Any inspection company accredited to ISO/IEC 17020 is acceptable to us. You pick. We do not appoint the inspector who is checking our own order.
The balance falls due only on a pass
The remaining 50 percent becomes payable when that report passes, and not before. Not on production being finished, not on a plant confirming it is ready, not on our word.
A fail means it does not ship
If the goods do not meet the agreed specification they are not loaded. Your deposit is returned to you less the inspection fee. We would rather lose the production slot than put a container you did not get to check onto a vessel.
The inspection fee comes out of your deposit
It is not an extra line added on top. It is paid from money you have already placed, which means choosing a stricter inspector never costs you more than choosing a lenient one.
That is deliberate. An inspection fee charged as an extra creates a quiet incentive to skip it. Taking it from the deposit removes that incentive from both sides of the table.
This is what we require of suppliers, not a favour we ask for
Staged payment and independent inspection are the conditions a plant has to accept before it can receive a Steelgaard order. A supplier who wants the full amount wired up front, or who will not have a third party in the building, does not get our orders.
That filter has a cost and you should know about it. It means we will sometimes tell you that a cheaper unit is not available to you. The plant quoting it would not clear this bar, so we do not offer it, even though offering it would be an easier sale.
What you are not being asked to trust
You are not asked to take our word on quality, because a third party you selected signs off on it. You are not asked to believe a factory exists, because your inspector is standing in it. You are not asked to release the balance against a promise, because the report comes first.
What is left is whether we coordinate the order competently. That is the one thing you cannot outsource to an inspector, and it is also the cheapest thing in this whole process for you to judge, because you can judge it from how we answer your first email.
If you would rather not send a deposit
Some buyers on container volume would rather have their own bank sitting in the middle of the transaction than send a deposit to a company they have not yet met. That is a reasonable thing to want and it is worth raising on your order.
What is workable on a documentary basis depends on the banks on both sides of a transaction, so we settle it in writing for your specific order rather than publish it here as a standing term. Ask, and you get a straight answer about your order rather than a general claim about every order.
What we do not do
We do not ask for payment in full in advance. We do not ship against a sample nobody independent has verified. We do not hold your deposit against some future order. We do not release your balance to a plant before your inspector has signed the report.
One thing this does not cover
Inspection protects you up to the point the goods pass inspection and are loaded. They are not marine insurance and they are not a customs guarantee. Cover in transit is governed by the Incoterm named on your quotation, and it is stated there explicitly rather than left for you to assume. We would rather write this sentence than have you find it out at a port.
Ask for a proforma.
Send the rating you need, the destination port and the quantity. You get a written proforma with the specification, the price, the lead time and this payment sequence on it. No obligation attaches until you sign it.
Request a proforma→