DIFC equipment hire: disputed border charges keep rising

If hired equipment is held at a border, the customs-cost clause alone may not settle who must pay. Check whether the disputed charge arose from the agreed hire movement or from a different export treatment, who authorised the documents and what the contract says about continuing hire. An urgent payment to release equipment also needs a clear record of whether liability is admitted or disputed.

Build a border-event sheet now: equipment identifiers, planned route, actual route, temporary or permanent movement as instructed, exporter and broker, date of hold, reason for hold, daily charges and the next available release option. This article concerns the parties' contractual dispute before the DIFC Courts. It does not state another country's customs law or determine what its authority must charge.

Disputed amount	Separate question	Record to obtain
Customs duty	What event or classification generated it?	Declaration, assessment and broker explanation
Continuing equipment hire	What starts and stops the rental clock?	Hire terms and return instructions
Truck waiting charges	Which vehicle waited, where and why?	Driver log and transport invoice
Lost use	What work could not be done during the delay?	Programme, site records and substitute options
Urgent release payment	What was being authorised?	Payment instruction and contemporaneous reservation

Who pays in a DIFC equipment hire customs charges dispute?

Start with the cost-allocation clause, then test the disputed charge against the transaction actually agreed. A duty incurred on an agreed hire movement is not necessarily the same as additional duty generated by treating hired equipment as a permanent supply. Identify the event said to make the charge payable before arguing about which party bears it.

Omid v Orah [2025] DIFC SCT 011, paragraphs 21-29, refused permission to appeal in such a dispute. The reasons distinguished the contractual hire movement from an unauthorised permanent-export treatment. They also examined the context of an urgent instruction to pay duty and a settlement offer. The case does not establish that hirers never pay customs duty or that every clearance error is automatically the supplier's responsibility.

Read the clause alongside the order, collection location, transport arrangement and later correspondence. If the equipment was supposed to leave one yard but the supplier later supplied it from another country, record the change. Ask what effect the change was meant to have on paperwork, cost and timing. A site manager's acceptance of a delivery estimate may not answer every one of those questions.

Keep the assessment made by customs separate from the invoice issued between the contracting parties. Even if a payment was needed to release the goods, the private contractual allocation can remain disputed. Obtain advice from appropriately qualified customs specialists on the assessment itself, while the contract adviser examines who should ultimately bear it.

Does the broker's mistake belong to the supplier or to me?

Find out who appointed and instructed the broker for the particular act in question. A person described as someone's regular broker may receive different instructions on a particular shipment. A contact introduction, a clearance instruction and authority to select a classification should not be treated as identical.

Create an instruction chronology containing the sender, recipient, attachment, action requested and response. Include the shipping invoice, draft declaration and final declaration. Mark the point at which temporary treatment became permanent treatment, if that happened. If the document trail does not show who made the change, leave that question open and identify who can explain it.

Ask whether the person giving an instruction had the authority being attributed to them. A request to clear urgently may be about timing rather than agreement to a materially different export basis. Equally, an express approval of an identified declaration should not be ignored because the resulting charge was unwelcome. The full exchange matters more than a favourable sentence lifted out of it.

For a company, preserve the purchasing and logistics roles separately. Who approved the hire, who arranged transport and who dealt with the border? Record any instructions passed by telephone in an honest dated note. Do not ask a broker to rewrite an earlier explanation. Request clarification while keeping the original version and its date intact.

These three records address different responsibilities.

Can I pay for release without accepting the whole demand?

Possibly, but the payment instruction and surrounding communications need careful wording. Identify whether you are authorising a payment to reduce further loss, agreeing that the charge is yours or settling the dispute. Do not assume that the word urgent answers that distinction.

In Omid, paragraphs 23-25 examined a payment authorisation in the context of the equipment being held, continued hire exposure and earlier denials of liability. The Court did not treat that particular authorisation as an admission of liability. That was a contextual conclusion, not a standard phrase that guarantees protection for every payment.

Before payment, ask for the assessment, amount, currency, beneficiary and anticipated release consequence. Confirm whether there are additional charges beyond the sum being requested. Keep evidence of why waiting would increase loss and what alternatives were considered. Where time permits, have the reservation and the proposed payment route reviewed before giving instructions.

After payment, obtain the receipt and release confirmation. Record which charges actually stopped and when. A payment described as solving the border issue may not end hire, transport or storage charges under the contract. Do not close the event file merely because the equipment begins moving again.

Common mistake. Writing only that the supplier should pay now and the parties will sort it out later. State what is authorised, what remains disputed and what proof of payment and release is required.

Why am I still being charged hire when I cannot use the equipment?

The invoice must be checked against the contractual rental period and the facts of delivery, availability and return. Equipment being unusable does not automatically answer whether rent accrues. Nor does a supplier's invoice prove that every day charged is properly payable.

Put the start and stop provisions beside the movement record. Identify whether hire begins on dispatch, arrival, commissioning or another agreed event. At the other end, check the required return location, notice and acceptance arrangements. If the supplier changed the nominated return point, preserve that instruction and the resulting timetable.

Split the timeline into periods rather than making one global accusation. There may be an initial mobilisation delay, a period of productive use, a return delay and time after the equipment reached the supplier's control. Identify the contractual position and alleged cause for each period. A daily-rate spreadsheet becomes more useful when every block of days has an explanation.

Ask for the supplier's calculation in editable or clearly itemised form. Reconcile the charged units, rate, minimum period, dates and credits against the equipment list. A duplicate serial number or unexplained partial-day charge is a calculation question that can be isolated without settling the larger allocation dispute.

For your own records, distinguish rent you dispute owing from loss you say the supplier caused. They may produce a different legal analysis. Do not quietly subtract every business expense from an invoice and call the result the admitted balance. Set out the proposed adjustment and obtain advice on the contractual and procedural basis for it.

What evidence supports lost rental days and truck charges?

Evidence should connect the actual delay to a defined cost or lost use, not merely show that the project was frustrating. Keep the hire invoice, truck booking, arrival and departure records, site programme and correspondence explaining why the equipment could not move or work.

For each claimed expense, identify the payer, invoice, date, reason and proof of payment or continuing liability. If the same invoice covers several projects, show the allocation to this event. If a truck would have been hired anyway, explain what additional cost the delay caused. A total transport invoice cannot by itself demonstrate an incremental waiting charge.

For lost use, identify the planned task and whether labour, permits, site access and other equipment were available. If the work could not have proceeded for an unrelated reason, record it. This is not conceding the whole claim. It is separating what can be supported from what would otherwise distract from the stronger part.

Use a clearly labelled hypothetical to test the calculation. If a truck waited three additional days at an agreed extra rate of AED 800 per day, the arithmetic expense is AED 2,400 before considering contractual entitlement and causation. That amount should not also appear inside a separate lump-sum delay claim. Check every total for the same cost appearing twice.

In Omid, paragraph 28 found that the documents permitted the primary judge's conclusion on wasted hiring and truck costs. The reasons contain inconsistent numerical descriptions of the rental adjustment earlier in the text. This guide therefore does not reproduce that figure as a model calculation.

What should I send while the border problem is still live?

Send an accurate operational request and a clearly framed contractual response. Keep the immediate release problem distinct from any offer to compromise the final liability. Get wording reviewed where a message could authorise an irreversible step or admit a disputed obligation.

1. Identify the equipment, location, hold reference and contact dealing with release.
2. Obtain the actual assessment and declaration, not just a summary of the amount demanded.
3. Confirm the agreed movement and the instruction said to justify the document used.
4. Request a specific release option, cost and expected operational consequence.
5. Record any payment authorisation and the matters expressly left in dispute.
6. Update the daily charge record and preserve practical alternatives considered.
7. After release, reconcile hire, transport, duty and any claimed loss separately.

Do not let several employees send conflicting instructions to the same broker. Nominate an authorised point of contact and circulate the operative instruction internally. The person managing release should know what has been agreed commercially, while the person disputing the invoice should know what is being done on the ground.

For the evidence file, the most revealing document may be the draft immediately before the declaration was lodged. Compare it with the final version and ask who approved the change. That comparison can narrow a long dispute about whose broker was involved into the specific act that created the charge.

Key takeaway. Separate the decision needed to release the equipment today from the final allocation of the cost. Record both so that operational urgency does not obscure the contractual dispute.

Close the incident with three reconciliations.

Will the SCT accept my settlement offer as an admission?

Do not assume either that every offer admits liability or that every message labelled without prejudice is protected. Omid, paragraph 27, treated the particular offer as a settlement communication in context despite the missing label. Have the proposed correspondence classified and drafted properly rather than copying a heading and relying on it.

For a DIFC claim, the jurisdictional basis comes before SCT allocation under RDC 53.2. An SCT consultation has its own without-prejudice treatment under RDC 53.38. That rule should not be treated as a blanket ruling about every earlier commercial message.

Present evidence according to the Court's directions. RDC 29.9-29.10 addresses control of evidence and applies through the SCT framework. A clear chronological file should show the decision points, not overwhelm the hearing with repeated forwarded emails. Any expert evidence needs permission under RDC 53.47.

Sources were checked on 29 September 2026. Omid is a dated permission-to-appeal refusal, not an independent statement of foreign customs law. The public later-history search was bounded. Confirm the applicable contract, current rules and case status before publication or use in a live dispute.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a customs-cost clause make every charge mine? Not necessarily. Check the charge against the agreed transaction and the authority for the paperwork that generated it.

Does a broker's usual relationship decide responsibility? No automatic conclusion follows. Examine appointment, specific instructions and authority for the disputed act.

Does paying duty admit liability? The wording and context matter. Omid's conclusion about an urgent payment was case-specific, not a universal protection.

Does hire stop whenever equipment is unusable? Not automatically. Review the start, availability and return provisions against the actual periods and causes.

Can I deduct every delay expense from the invoice? Do not assume so. Separate the claimed losses and obtain advice on entitlement, causation and the basis for any deduction.

Can an unlabelled settlement offer be protected? It may be, as the particular offer in Omid was. Context matters and the label alone should not be relied on.

What was the procedural outcome in Omid? Permission to appeal was refused. This article distinguishes that decision from the underlying primary judgment.

Does this explain another country's customs duties? No. It concerns a DIFC contractual dispute about allocation and evidence, not the validity or amount of a foreign customs assessment.

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult a qualified advocate for advice on your specific situation.

Related Guides

Our DIFC commercial contracts page covers payment, suspension, termination, guarantees and shareholder disputes under DIFC-law agreements.

• A long-term equipment contract ended: must I pay the exit bill?
• DIFC goods not as described: should I refuse delivery?
• The storage facility was unavailable: can I claim delay costs in DIFC?