Charge complaint: the FMC route to a demurrage refund

A charge complaint is the mechanism the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022 added for a shipper, consignee or trucker who has been billed a charge by an ocean common carrier and thinks the charge is not compliant. In practice it is a demurrage and detention mechanism: the Commission says complaints about the reasonableness of those two charges “tend to be the most common”, though the section reaches any carrier fee that fails 46 U.S.C. 41104(a) or 41102. It is also the route that fits a single invoice: a reparations claim for an unjust and unreasonable practice under 41102(c) has to clear five separate elements, one of which is that the conduct is happening on a normal, customary and continuous basis.

The burden shift is the point

In an ordinary complaint to the Commission under 46 U.S.C. 41301, the complainant bears the burden of establishing the violation. Under section 41310 the respondent carrier “bear[s] the burden of establishing the reasonableness of any demurrage or detention charges pursuant to [46 CFR] 545.5”.

That is the difference between arguing a terminal’s operations from outside the terminal and asking the terminal’s customer to justify its own bill.

No limitation period

The Commission’s final rule of 1 September 2026 states it plainly: a 41301 complaint must be filed within three years after the claim accrues to obtain reparations, while section 41310 “does not contain a statute of limitations for Charge Complaints”. The only boundary is the front one — OSRA 2022 is not retroactive, so the charge must have been assessed on or after 16 June 2022.

Three ways to file the same claim

The September 2026 rule exists to correct a reading that the Commission’s own interim procedure was the only route. It is not. A charge complaint may be brought under the interim procedure (emailed to the Commission, no fee), as a formal complaint under subpart E (§§ 502.61–502.75, $387), or as a small claim under subpart S (§ 502.304, $176, up to $50,000). The classification follows the claim rather than the route: a filing that names the bills of lading and the invoices and alleges a 41104(a) or 41102 violation is a charge complaint by operation of law, and the burden shift comes with it.

The two processes may not run at the same time, and a claim decided on the merits may not be refiled.

What it does not get you

Civil penalties, if the Commission assesses any, are payable to the US Treasury’s General Fund. A claimant may not request them and they do not count toward the small claims limit. The refund is the money.

And none of it reaches a charge outside the US foreign trades. A demurrage invoice raised at Nhava Sheva or Jebel Ali is a contract question; in India the instrument that waives the custodian’s charge for days Customs held the goods is the detention certificate.

The longer version, including what an import desk has to keep to use any of this, is in the post on the September 2026 rule.

What the whole mechanism turns on is records the desk kept at the time: the discharge date, the free-time allowance that applied, the gate-out timestamp, who was chased for the missing document and when. Assembled after an invoice lands, that is a fortnight of archaeology. Assembled as the shipment runs, it is a by-product, which is what demurrage and detention software that holds the charge record is for.