Bad contracts make bad business

The Secretariat continues to receive regular reports from members and non-members alike who have been offered, and have unfortunately sometimes accepted, business on the basis of unauthorised copies of BIMCO standard contracts. These “home-made” BIMCO forms often contain difficult to detect and onerous changes to the terms of the contract or are sometimes just riddled with typographical errors. The use of a form in the honest belief that it is a genuine BIMCO form is not illegal, but it can be a costly mistake.
One of the benefits of using an authorised standard BIMCO form is that the unamended terms can be relied upon without having to proof check the document carefully. However, when using unauthorised versions of a standard BIMCO form, there is no guarantee that the wording of the form is identical to the authorised BIMCO version, even if it may look the same.
The types of differences that may arise are, for example, slight changes in wording that change the allocation of responsibility e.g., adding the word “not” before “liable”. The risk to a party unknowingly accepting a BIMCO form that is not genuine is that they may be unwittingly agreeing to more onerous terms. In addition, this practice may also cause inconsistencies that result in a conflict between charter party and bill of lading terms.
The assumption that a “home-made” BIMCO form contains the same wording as an authorised copy can be an expensive one, not least because in the eyes of the law there is little excuse for not reading the terms of the contract by which you have agreed to be bound.
BIMCO offers authenticated and secure electronic copies of all its contracts at a very reasonable price through its online contract editing system IDEA2; so it’s simply not worth the potential risk to agree to terms in a counterfeit form. In any event, we encourage members and users of BIMCO forms to be vigilant and to ensure, insofar as is possible, that any document they sign is a genuine BIMCO form.
If you are in doubt over the authenticity of any contract that claims to be published by BIMCO, we encourage you to send a copy to BIMCO’s Legal and Contractual Affairs Department and, if possible, identify the source of the document. We can tell you straight away if it is a genuine copy or a fake.
Source: BIMCO