ATA Carnet for Robotics brought to you by RobotLife

Something went wrong. Now what?

Carnet problems are fixable, but the fixes are deadline-driven and country-specific. These playbooks are for carnets issued in the UK. Two rules apply to every scenario: act immediately, and tell your issuing chamber early. The chamber is your guarantor, and honestly, it has seen every one of these problems before.

"I'm back in the UK, but I never got the re-import stamp"

The carnet's paper trail now has a hole, and that hole becomes a duty claim if you leave it. The UK remedy is a Certificate of Location:

  1. Contact the NCU and request a Certificate of Location. Don't go back to the airport hoping for a late stamp: retrospective endorsement by Border Force is usually not possible at airports.
  2. An officer must physically inspect the goods, at a customs office or at your premises. Certificates can't be based on photographs or other documentary evidence, so the robot itself has to be shown. Visits to your premises are chargeable (Notice 112A).
  3. Since March 2023, certificates are emailed to you as scanned colour documents (per a secondary source).
  4. Send the certificate to your chamber as evidence for closing the carnet, and keep a copy with your records.

"I'm abroad and missed a stamp on the way"

  1. Go to the nearest customs office in that country with goods and carnet, and ask them to process or annotate the carnet. Some administrations will.
  2. If they won't, collect evidence of the goods' movements (transport documents, boarding passes) and make absolutely sure the remaining stamps happen, especially the re-export when you leave.
  3. Back in the UK, complete box F at re-import as normal, and brief your chamber on the gap.

"I lost the carnet"

  1. Call your issuing chamber. It can issue a substitute carnet; repeat fees apply.
  2. The substitute must be validated by the NCU before use. Build that step into your timeline.
  3. Here's the uncomfortable part: per the issuing manual, a lost carnet precludes clearance of your liability for 33 months. Get a Certificate of Location confirming the goods were re-imported within the carnet's validity, so you have evidence ready if a foreign claim arrives during that window.

Prevention is embarrassingly cheap: a dedicated folder with a GPS tracker in it, and photos of every page after every stamp.

"A claim letter arrived"

When foreign customs believe carnet goods stayed in their country, the claim travels down the guarantee chain: the foreign administration lodges it with UKNATACO (claims email: ukfngo@uknataco.co.uk), UKNATACO involves your issuing chamber, and the chamber contacts you. Then:

  1. Don't ignore it. Claims must be regularised by the deadline on the first letter (six months in the manual's process), with reminders roughly every two months.
  2. Provide evidence that the goods left the claiming country or returned to the UK: stamped counterfoils, a Certificate of Location, transport documents.
  3. If your evidence is late or imperfect, many countries settle against a regularisation fee instead of full duties. The scales are country-specific; as illustration, the Oct 2024 issuing manual quotes the USA at 25% of duties (minimum £50) when proof is dated within 3 months after expiry, and the Philippines at USD 25/50. Current scales may differ.
  4. Some countries offer no regularisation option at all: per the same manual, Bahrain, Thailand, the UAE and Ukraine. There, full duties become payable. One more reason to chase every stamp on the spot.

"The customer wants to keep the robot"

Fixable, if you act before anything expires: customs may allow the goods to be sold on an exceptional basis. Get the host country's customs approval first, pay the local duties, and use the duty-paid documentation to regularise the carnet. Selling without approval costs duty, taxes, administrative charges and a penalty. Background in the robotics guide.

"The carnet expires but the goods must stay abroad"

A carnet can't be extended; a replacement carnet arranged through your chamber before expiry is the route, where the destination country accepts one. India, Japan, Morocco and Taiwan don't, and the USA accepts neither replacements nor transits. Details in using your carnet.

Sources

Every factual claim on this page comes from the sources below, checked on the "last reviewed" date in the footer. Official resources are linked in whatever language they are published in.