As the subject says, I have been pulled by UK Customs inbound at Dover 8 times on the trot.
After the fifth ‘pull in please’ the sixth and seventh were after having trouble with my passport French side prior to boarding (UK desk)
After the seventh time I got a new passport as the officers suggested it was ‘faulty’ but I still copped it on the first trip with the new one.
Should I complain? Will it make it worse (if it can get worse)?
Why could they be doing this - I’m thinking it surely can’t be random? I’ve never had any problems with any pull.
I’m scratching my head, any advice would be welcome thanks.
Probably a marker on your trailer number.
I had this a few years ago everytime i shipped back through Ramsgate. The subby that had the trailer before me was a little bit over keen with the duty free ■■■■. I was pulled ‘randomly’ everytime I came into Ramsgate with that trailer.
I just took it on the chin, didn’t let it bother me and gave a wry smirk everytime they wanted to go in the back and tap for false walls. If they’re not complaining about working in the back of a fridge at -25, I certainly wasn’t.
I personally thought it quite a joke that customs would think that someone getting royally shafted over some ■■■■ would be stupid enough to do it again with the same trailer, but ours is not to reason why…
They’re only doing their job and I was getting paid by the hour, so i just let them get on with it
Its about right that.
What about the passport. I rang passport office up and they said if your name was marked. Then we would not given you a passport.
I have heard of people asking for the head cherang and asking why you were pulled on those certain days, when he says Random, ask to see the log for those days, he wont show you, but he may try to stop it happening so often in the future.
Have you ever met Limey Phil?
Have you just changed truck and it has been happening since then?
Are you pulling the same trailer each time and is this a recent acquisition?
How do you pay for your ferry crossing? A cash payment rather than account will guarantee a pull for instance.
Have you loaded from the same place each time? Could be that place is on a watch list.
Have you been issued a Form 1 at any time for being a little over exuberant 
with your tobacco purchases?
Has anyone else from your firm had a recent run in with them over tobacco or alcohol amounts?
There are many reasons why you could be getting a regular pull and the only way to find out is to ask. Ask further up the food chain than those doing the pulling though for any chance of a proper answer.
Are you related to Limeyphil at all 
Maybe coffee…or coffee cognac might cure th French side?
Best thing to do,as suggested,is to walk in the office of the chief customs man,ask to see why you get tugged,he may explain why,or maybe he wont,or get your details taken off their tug a lot computer records.It may be a computer error.
Easy to change your trailer number, just put a 1 in front, more likely to be a marker on the unit.
Coffeeholic:
Have you just changed truck and it has been happening since then?
Nope
Coffeeholic:
Are you pulling the same trailer each time and is this a recent acquisition?
Same trailer each time, had it nearly a year
Coffeeholic:
How do you pay for your ferry crossing? A cash payment rather than account will guarantee a pull for instance.
Ferries paid by customer
Coffeeholic:
Have you loaded from the same place each time? Could be that place is on a watch list.
Nope (not going well is it?)
Coffeeholic:
Have you been issued a Form 1 at any time for being a little over exuberant
Had no problem with any tug. Nothing. No confiscations and no one has ever burst out of the curtains and legged it
Coffeeholic:
Has anyone else from your firm had a recent run in with them over tobacco or alcohol amounts?
I’m the only one who does European
Coffeeholic:
There are many reasons why you could be getting a regular pull and the only way to find out is to ask. Ask further up the food chain than those doing the pulling though for any chance of a proper answer.
I will ask Dave next time he pulls me, apparantly he plays golf off 20 and is married to Julie 
I’ve separated your answers cos leaving them with the message all in the same single quote made it difficult to read. dd.
Stralis Shifter:
Coffeeholic:
Have you just changed truck and it has been happening since then?Nope
Coffeeholic:
Are you pulling the same trailer each time and is this a recent acquisition?Same trailer each time, had it nearly a year
Coffeeholic:
How do you pay for your ferry crossing? A cash payment rather than account will guarantee a pull for instance.Ferries paid by customer
Coffeeholic:
Have you loaded from the same place each time? Could be that place is on a watch list.Nope (not going well is it?)
Coffeeholic:
Have you been issued a Form 1 at any time for being a little over exuberantHad no problem with any tug. Nothing. No confiscations and no one has ever burst out of the curtains and legged it
Coffeeholic:
Has anyone else from your firm had a recent run in with them over tobacco or alcohol amounts?I’m the only one who does European
Coffeeholic:
There are many reasons why you could be getting a regular pull and the only way to find out is to ask. Ask further up the food chain than those doing the pulling though for any chance of a proper answer.I will ask Dave next time he pulls me, apparantly he plays golf off 20 and is married to Julie
I’ve separated your answers cos leaving them with the message all in the same single quote made it difficult to read. dd.
In that case they just don’t like you. 
I got pulled of the train at Calais after going strait through all the usual checks.
We were all boarded and going trough the safety info in the restaurant car when a chap came in and said will the six trucks at the front of the second part re board the bus and move of the train. After a lot looking and counting i found i was number six and got on the bus with the other five and headed back to the rear of the train and was told by the official that the first five were to travel to the next platform and get on the next train and the sixth one to stay on the platform and wait for British customs as they wanted to talk to me.
Shortly after parking three English cars came racing on to the platform all lights and hazards going and surrounded my truck then one of them got out and said to follow them back to the inspection bays as they wanted to search my vehicle and refused to answer my questions.
I turned out that the chaps at the passport control had my number and were supposed to have pulled me but forgot i said that there was no need for all the drama they could have seen me next time as i am though every week but they said it must be today as they were working on intelligence. Long story short they found nothing and we reckoned it was someone who didn’t like me mischief-making on the anonymous hot line
. All very exiting at the time but just goes to show what we have to go through to do our job.
Stralis Shifter:
Coffeeholic:
There are many reasons why you could be getting a regular pull and the only way to find out is to ask. Ask further up the food chain than those doing the pulling though for any chance of a proper answer.I will ask Dave next time he pulls me, apparantly he plays golf off 20 and is married to Julie
Try asking what is for lunch on Sunday, as you must assume you are to be invited as they like your company so much 
I said this once after getting stopped 2/3 times a week the person I asked happened to be a supervisor who after receiving my explanation of the comment updated the records and the problem went away. 
(Now I need a fix for the scanner at the train on the way out 
This happened to me after I got a new (secondhand) truck. Seven or eight times on the trot. It used to belong to Continental Express.
Eventually I got so fed up with it that I got hold of the Head Honcho at Dover on the phone, and suggested to him that the truck registration was “red-flagged” but that it no longer belonged to whoever was responsible for this.
He said “I don’t suppose you would be prepared to give me the registration number then, ho ho ho!”
So I said “Of course I will, how else would you know what truck you are repeatedly stopping?”
And then I said “All the time you are wasting resources on me, the real smugglers are getting through”.
He denied that I was “red-flagged” but after that phone call I wasn’t stopped again.
Harry Monk:
He denied that I was “red-flagged” but after that phone call I wasn’t stopped again.
They have always told me, “it’s just random drive,”
then why is this the third time this week then?
It seems to stop as harry mentioned
I went through a phase of being stopped every time at Dover. Haven’t been stopped for months now.
That could change so I won’t worry about it.
Coffeeholic:
Stralis Shifter:
Coffeeholic:
Have you just changed truck and it has been happening since then?Nope
Coffeeholic:
Are you pulling the same trailer each time and is this a recent acquisition?Same trailer each time, had it nearly a year
Coffeeholic:
How do you pay for your ferry crossing? A cash payment rather than account will guarantee a pull for instance.Ferries paid by customer
Coffeeholic:
Have you loaded from the same place each time? Could be that place is on a watch list.Nope (not going well is it?)
Coffeeholic:
Have you been issued a Form 1 at any time for being a little over exuberantHad no problem with any tug. Nothing. No confiscations and no one has ever burst out of the curtains and legged it
Coffeeholic:
Has anyone else from your firm had a recent run in with them over tobacco or alcohol amounts?I’m the only one who does European
Coffeeholic:
There are many reasons why you could be getting a regular pull and the only way to find out is to ask. Ask further up the food chain than those doing the pulling though for any chance of a proper answer.I will ask Dave next time he pulls me, apparantly he plays golf off 20 and is married to Julie
I’ve separated your answers cos leaving them with the message all in the same single quote made it difficult to read. dd.
In that case they just don’t like you.
Or maybe they like you a bit to much.
Does one of them give you a special smile, or do you have a good line in jokes and funny stories, that brightens up thier day.
muckles:
Or maybe they like you a bit to much.Does one of them give you a special smile, or do you have a good line in jokes and funny stories, that brightens up thier day.
An ex-colleague of mine managed to avoid being sent to the scanner at the tunnel today by the French, they were pulling everything apparently, by uttering the phrase - “Allez les Bleus!”. Apparently it was something to do with egg chasing but it worked and he got waved directly through.
Unfortunately there was a Welshman at UKBA and I said it to him !
I have just got out of Dover priory.
Once I probably quite stupidly bought my brother some tobacco in Luxembourg and decleared said purchase upon arrival in Dover. They started asking me all sorts of questions about what I’d bought and why and as I dont smoke I had no idea what the stuff was, I just bought what he asked for. He didnt even buy it from me, it was for Christmas or his birthday, I cant quite remember now…any how they obviously suspected I was up to no good and pulled me in to the shed and unloaded my entire load of groupage out of the fridge and spent the next four hours calling every customer on the manifest. Eventually they let me go and I thought nothing of it, until my next arrival in Dover a week or so later when I got pulled again, and again and again…after five for six times on one saturday afternoon when I was trying to get to Folkestone to have my weekly rest I lost my patience and asked to make a formal complaint to some one in charge. I wasn’t given the oppertunity to do so, I was immediately given the all clear to leave and that was the end of it. Next week I got a new truck and never got pulled again…dont know whether it was me making a fuss or the fact I was in a new vehicle but the harassment stopped.