Earlier this month, I was asked to order a car part for a friend's Buick. I ordered it from www.rockauto.com in the US, which happens to have an excellent online catalog interface. It cost $150. My friend inquired into the cost of the Estonian customs duty and found it would still be cheaper than buying the part locally.
Before I go on, let me note I have had problems before with Estonian customs arrangements under the EU. For example, gone are the days when you could order books from Amazon in the US with no headache. Now you have to make sure you are under the minimum of about 40 EUR or you face a tax form that besides being an incredibly poorly laid out and ugly document (which is beside the point) is also an expensive proposition. Also, Morgan's baby clothes, both new and used ones, have been taxed. The Joe Q. Populist in me says the system is slightly broke. But as I said, we did the math in this case.
I chose the basic international shipping option at $35. The valve shipped the next day.
On Friday, two weeks later, I got a cryptic first-class letter from a logistics firm in Maardu, which is a town 20 km from Tallinn, saying that a package had arrived but they had been "unable to contact me thus far". Eh? The letter also listed various prices for customs formalities, which I figured was not "mix 'n' match" but "we choose most of them for you", but nothing was clear about the letter.
I sent off an e-mail, saying, essentially, "Hi; You found me at my address, good work!; Now please tell me the amount and your bank account number, please, so you can deliver the package to my address" (but not actually sounding like an asshole).
Because this is the way you do things in Estonia. If you need to pay, you remit by Internet at light speed. And things do get delivered to your doorstep 99% of the time.
No answer for two days. It was the weekend, but it was an international logistics firm. On Monday I got a reply with a list of options for formalizing the customs declaration. One seemed time-consuming and one seemed exorbitantly expensive at $50 plus the actual duties.
I finally got around to the time-consuming option on Wednesday, figuring that I needed about an hour. I hopped in the Skoda and headed off to the ominous-sounding address of Kesk-Sõjamäe. It translates as Central War Mountain. This is very relevant.
It was located in a battlefield -- I mean, brownfield -- between the airport and the Soviet suburb of Lasnamäe and I think I nearly snapped a tie-rod negotiating the potholes before I got to the customs warehouse.
Every courier firm you can think of has leased space in the customs building.
At FedEx, which to their credit I found quickly, two women were sitting at computers in the busy-looking/doing-nothing way. One of the women, who was very nice, handed me a stack of papers, including the incredibly ugly and poorly laid out tax form. I checked: "Just one package?" She told me to go to customs, adding, "have you been there before" in the tone of voice that implies long and involved directions are about to follow.
Customs is in a separate entrance to the building, 300 metres away, far enough to verge on annoying and probably (I'm just editorializing here) avoid the semblance that FedEx is in bed with them and collects part of the customs storage fees.
Customs was a blast. If you wondered where the apocryphal world of EU banana-length standards had got to, it is right here, in Estonian customs. Or, Welcome to Soviet Estonia.
When my number was called (after 15 minutes) I had to fill out a document called "traveler's form", which I should have known to do when I first took my number. A "traveller's form"? I hadn't travelled anywhere, ah, not unless you count the potholed route to get to the customs terminal at the edge of the brownfield.
Then she studied me and asked if I knew what the auto part was for. Uh-oh, I thought, could it be used for making pipe bombs or something? No, she needed to find the code. I don't know, I said, can you just put down the code for "auto part"? No, she said. To be honest, I still don't know what an EGR valve does.
But I finally said it goes "inside the car", and she seemed to be all right with that.
She then told me to sit down, which I duly did, and this kept me from seeing what she got up to in the next 30 minutes, but I know it involved:
* conference calls
* huddled consultation with co-workers
* scissors
* ballpoint pen
* felt-tip pen
* computer
* co-worker's computer
This was not her first week on the job. I asked her.
But she wasn't done. She told me to go to a window across the aisle to pay the duty, $35, and then return the receipt to her. I asked if I should get another waiting lisr number. You never know with places like this.
The cashier was a silent type whose acknowledgment of me was ambiguous (this seems to be true of bursars everywhere). Then followed more use of scissors and pen, manual keying of my debit card number followed by what must have been a very lengthy payment details field; and then -- as a novelty -- an ink stamp on multiple receipts.
Back to the first woman, who actually said I was good to go...to Package Pickup on the ground floor of the first part of the building.
The reading material at Package Pickup was, generously, Linnaleht, the free rag. But I recommend you bring a copy of The Bridge by Iain Banks.**
Here at Package Pickup I had a problem. They had started calculating the storage fees on the package about two weeks ago, and they had run up to another $40. But I KNOW I received the first notice on Friday, two business days ago. At this point I balked. They told me to pay, and take it up with FedEx later. I said I would go right back to FedEx before paying anything.
Back upstairs, at FedEx, unfortunately I made the nice women turn defensive and not so nice. Oddly, they leapt to the defence of the mystery Maardu logistics firm, NT Logistika, which was not even in Tallinn, who, they said, had gone to CONSIDERABLE LENGTHS to contact me. NT Logistika had apparently even Googled my name, costing them a pretty penny, to try to find my mobile number and e-mail address.
Unfortunately -- no, they had not tried to reach me at the address to which the package was addressed. But -- they quickly put in, seeing where this was going -- this was good service.
I went back downstairs to Package Pickup, where I told them that FedEx had screwed up royally, and had admitted as much, and had made their first written attempt to contact me only on Friday. The woman at Package Pickup unfortunately called FedEx and learned that FedEx refused to pay the $35 in stroage fees for me, and someone would have to pay it before I could pick up the package.
It then turned out that the whole prospect of paying was academic, anyway -- Package Pickup had no pay-by-card option. The woman, who was twirling a ballpoint pen significantly, told me to go to a shopping centre 2 miles back down the road to use an ATM.
At this point, things, mm, deteriorated.
I left, drove off, and just kept going. I may have to authorize the Buick owner to pick up his part. I'll have to think of something. They may call security if I go back myself.
**The Bridge may not ring any bells, but it's convoluted and I remembered the absurdist bureaucratic parts.
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13 comments:
Good story. I'll forward it to my brother who just sent his sea-container with two cars and personal belongings to Estonia. See, he wants to start living in Estonia. This will prepare him for the hell he's gonna go thru. In America, all you need is money and you have no problems. It ain't that way in Estonia. I keep hearing this from very well to do people. This kinda Zimbabwe style mind-fuck is intolerable. What is extremely infuritating is that these are your own people doing it to you. Not some big ass, inner-tube lipped spearchuckers. Your own people. Estonians. The one's you stood together in Balti Kett and sang "Koit." I can't take it.
I stay right here where I am. In Virginia. A stranger totally at home among the strangers.
Ugh, if I didn't know better I would say they wanted a bribe. But they don't.
That's an insult to the intelligence. Luckily it doesn't hapen every day.
Life in Estonia isn't usually like this.
HH, agreed, but many African countries have incredibly complex bribery cultures (with maybe faster results?), so I wouldn't call them savages, for any reason.
Also, don't you think the US has its share of annoying waits? DMVs in bigger cities? But only very rarely the multiple receipt system famous from the Soviet department store.
As I mentioned there was a $50 dollar option in Estonia where I could have stayed at home. The clerks and everybody would have still (I guess) had to do the runaround. Why is it cheaper if you take time off work to go yourself? It costs 300 kroons for them to deliver the package across town?
Maybe it's the price we pay for low taxes.
Why are we being stupid about these packages? This was embarrassingly bad, today.
The Amazon part sounds odd - when I got a package that was above the limit, they just sent me an invoice by post; I went to the central post office, paid the taxes and got the package. I'm fairly sure a similar service is available at the central post building in Tallinn (on Pallasti street), though I imagine if you want to pick up the package at your local post office, you'd need to deal with the customs directly.
Customs brokers are, to be honest, worth it. Back when I sold inflatable dildos on eBay (that's a three-pint minimum story though), I had to take delivery of five large boxes of parts shipped from India; the overhead to use a broker was something like 1500 eek, and the extent of my involvement was to a)fax paperwork to the broker, and b)go to that selfsame warehouse to pick up the boxes.
Great story!!! It really is like that - even the drive there has not changed since I did it about 8 months ago. It doesn't even seem to help if you are consistently nice to each person you encounter on this trail of tears. I did it once and the Fed Ex guy was nice enough to walk me thru most of the procedure. But even then it was ridiculous - yes, those faces and attitudes, the way they pretend to be busy, the walking from one place to the next, the waiting even though no one else is even in line. Is this E-Estonia??? Since then I always pay to have "them" do it and also warn people mailing me things to keep the value low to avoid it all.
This is definitely one area where the EU has made things much worse in Estonia. There is an old joke about Estonians carrying out stupid Russian decrees with German efficiency - seems that in this area it continues in the same style.
Otherwise a lot of things are really simple here - especially the internet banking. Places that also used to demand cash for filling out certain forms or providing you copies of official documents (necessitating a trip to the nearest cash machine) have now changed to allow you to make the payment by internet and then emailing proof of payment to them. I think that is why coming up against the customs stuff is such a glaring and unexpected contrast. And, no, they do NOT want bribes! It is just weird stick-in-the-mud thinking.
And, similar petty thinking obtains, I think in the minds of owners of shops in Old Town that do not accept credit cards. They lose a great deal of business if the customer or hurried tourist is not carrying enough cash to make that impulse purchse. Nevertheless they prefer to save the fee they would pay to a credit card company. Classic example of penny-wise and pound-foolish. When I suggested that the shop merely set a minimum purchase amount credit card purchases (something reasonable like 25, 50 or 100 crowns) they were aghast - no, that would NEVER work here. It will take time to root out Soviet thinking...Here we may get over it eventually, but how about places like Russia where things are getting progressivley worse?
Why is it that when you come across something unfamiliar or different (readonly)it's automatically post-soviet, whereas it might have nothing to do with the "Soviet"? Different customs, beliefs...etc.
I had to move to NYC for work a couple of years ago, and it took US customs 3 months! to clear my belongings (had to buy second set of work and winter clothes). And it took 2 working days to open an account at Chase. What kind of thinking would you call that?
I've been through customs at Suur-Sõjamäe, and sure, it's no fun. If this makes it any better - the process goes faster once you're already in their system. So next time things will be less painful.
Flasher -- In the words of the customs official, do you know what those things are used for? But 1500 EEK seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable amount to spend as overhead, especially if you're importing something that lucrative. And I want to hear that story. I hope three pints is still medically indicated? I will drink most of them.
In Amazon US's case, the headache is purely of the kind you get from slapping your forehead and saying, damn, this is expensive. A headache nonetheless, so I stand by what I wrote.
If you buy from the amazon.co.uk, no duty, except not everything is available and sometimes American characters' dialogue gets rendered in silly inverted commas.
Readonly - I'm glad I'm not alone. Estonia is one of the least corrupt countries according to the various indexes, but can be is something -- corporatist? administrativist?
One thing to keep in mind, and I don't know the answer, is what happens if someone in say western Kansas gets DHL'd 100 EUR of merchandise from Europe. Do they have to drive to Topeka, what is the fee.
I talk too much here, over and out.
There is stupidity and too much bureaucracy in many places in the world, but I do contend that Soviet thinking is responsible for much of that kind of behaviour in Estonia. Fifty years of Soviet occupation really did a number on the people who lived through it and affected them more than they themselves realize. It becomes apparent in unexpected ways and in unexpected places and people.
And, as I wrote, it is the contrasts that make it so jarring and annoying - on the one hand there is the ease of doing most things (even filing one's taxes) by internet and then BOOM!: "here in this government office we take only cash and also provide endless lines and waiting."
Even declaring low value on baby presents sent by postal service didn't help the package ever get from point A (US) to point B (you) apparently! Not lost in cyber space--just lost!
Sending an undervalued package of baby clothes via postal service didn't ever get the items from point A (US) to point B (you)either...not lost in cyber space...just lost!
My mail forwarding company ships me everything I order from the U.S. as a gift worth $20 via first class air mail. :-)
A mail forwarding company? But that's the solution to everything. Is that a service like an answering service that anyone can subscribe to?
Gracie -- just as frustrated as you are, though this is very rare and it isn't symptomatic of the customs-bureaucracy problem. But as late as 1999, a package to Estonia I know of ended up routed to S. America and then to Espana or something like that. Does happen.
Estonian Post Office is actually very good - problems (late delivery, lost packages) usually originate at the sender's side. Lots of people working big centers there have little knowledge of geography, I fear. On the other hand - small is beautiful! There are real stories about how Eesti Post has delivered things to people here based on only the name of the addressee and the country.
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