Travel with Manfred

Travelogues from around the world

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Copyright © 1999 by Manfred P.. All rights reserved.

Jan 16 - Aug 31, 1999

Fear, Love and Laughter

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Lima and Peru, Part 3: The Ugly

by

Manfred P.

Keywords: Peru, Lima, Peruvian customs, tourist, travel trip report, travel log, travelogue.

Fear, Love and Laughter. These are just a few of the many sides of Lima. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Lima is a trilogy. This is "Part 3: The Ugly" of this trilogy. For all the brighter, more positive aspects of Lima and Peru read "Part 1: The Good".

The Customs

Even now when I think about it, anger boils up inside me. This is a nightmare of the third dimension. It was bad enough that airport employees have stolen my laptop at the Madrid airport out of my locked luggage, but the story should take a turn for the worse.

Of course, my laptop has everything, my laptop is my life. It holds all my travel stories, my financial statements, my tax reports, 200 personal photos that I have collected over a decade, 800 addresses and phone numbers of my friends world-wide, my to-do lists, who-owes-me-what lists, and 100s of read as well as unread emails. Of course, I have no back-up. Only the travel stories are on the Web and therefore I have a copy, everything else has not been backed up for a year. I next try to get my 1-year-old backup tape, which is located in the office. After various emails and phone calls, my office colleagues inform me that they have thrown the tape away because they thought it was just a temporary back-up tape. So, now I can be sure I have really lost absolutely everything.

Then my company has ordered a new laptop but until it was ready I have left Europe again and was in Peru. So, the office in London sent the laptop to me in Peru using DHL. I even instruct the office to make sure that there are no customs problems and that I will not have to pay anything. "No, no, don't worry," was the answer. "You will have it in 3 days." 3 days, and I can finally be productive again, I thought. 3 days go by, 4, 5, 6, and 7. On day 7 DHL comes to the office. I get all excited and walk to the front-desk assuming to get my laptop. At the front-desk is a DHL guy giving me a piece of paper with a airway bill (AWB) number telling me I need to go to the DHL office. Disappointment, I have to go there. Well, during the next lunch break I go there. I give the paper with the AWB number to the DHL agent. "One moment please." The agent talked to another agent and then disappeared. Ah, she is fetching the laptop now, I thought. She comes back and hands me a DHL envelope, the typical larger-than- letter-size plastic envelope. I open it, of course there is no laptop inside, just another 1-page paper. I ask the agent what that means and where my laptop is. The agent then explains me that the laptop is at customs and that Peruvian law prohibits DHL to obtain it from customs and that I need to hire a customs agent. "What the hell is a customs agent? And what is this piece of paper?" I ask. "You can find custom agents in the yellow pages of your phone book and the custom agent knows what to do with this piece of paper. This piece of paper says that you are the owner of the laptop," was the response. "What do you mean? I don't want to hire anyone. I don't want to search for a custom agent. I want my laptop. You should get it for me." "No sir, we cannot get it for you. Peruvian law does not allow that." "How much will the customs agent cost me?" "We don't know sir. It depends on the custom agent." "Okay, okay, just give me a rough idea, is it $10, $100 or $1,000?" "Sir, we cannot give you such information." "You will have some idea. Is this the first time a custom agent had to be used?" "No sir, every time a shipment is over a certain value a custom agent must be used. It might be a few hundred dollars." "I think this stinks. Why should I have to pay a few hundred dollars?" "Sir, we cannot help you." "It still stinks. Can you recommend me a custom broker." "We cannot do that sir." "Let me rephrase. What is the normal, most common custom broker that your clients use?" "This would be company X. Here is their phone number." I take the phone number and the piece of paper and leave the office. It is a waste of time talking to that lady.

In the office I discuss this with friends. The consensus is that I should call the custom broker and pay the few hundred dollars. Okay, I am still fuming, because I had made clear to the London office they should fill out any paperwork such that I don't have to pay anything. Looks like I have no choice. Because my Spanish is lousy, my friends call the custom broker for me. We fax some paperwork to him and are told that he will be responding shortly, in a day or so. Of course, two or three days pass. We call again and hear that we need to pay something like US$1,200. When I hear this I nearly explode. What for? This is robbery. I will not be blackmailed, I do not want to pay this. I have another "meeting" with my friends and we discuss this also with some Peruvians to see if they have any good ideas. US$1,200 is too much, we should get a lawyer. The boyfriend of the secretary of the partner company here in Peru is a lawyer very familiar with such cases. An expert in this field. An expert? I doubt it, but we will see. We fax all the paperwork to the lawyer and we inform the secretary and her boyfriend about all the details. The lawyer says that in a few days things will be solved. Finally good news. The lawyer will fix it I think.

I will have to think again. After one week no news from the lawyer. A few more phone calls that my friends make. He is very busy, but tomorrow we will have some response. Okay, one day more, two days more. We call again. The price tag that the lawyer informs us about is US$1,400 for custom fees. Why? And how much will the lawyer cost me? We try the lawyer another two weeks. The price tag of $1,400 changes every time we talk to the lawyer. This is what he needs to pay to the customs office. I don't get it. How can it change every day? Are they just making these numbers up? Are they pulling numbers out of a hat? It sure looks like it. The price goes up and down. We keep insisting that there should be no tax and no fees as I will leave the country again with this laptop. If you bring a laptop into the country on a plane and leave with it again, you have an exception and don't need to pay any duties. So, why should it be different here. Eventually we end at the bargain price of $850.

$850 is a lot better than $1,400 but I still don't want to pay it. I don't want to pay a single penny. It is all just nonsense. There is no law that says that you have to pay duties if you can prove that you take the item out of Peru again. I don't like to be screwed by the government, I don't like to be screwed by the Peruvian government. I don't want to pay the $850. We abandon the approach of using the lawyer. He says he cannot get it for any less. But the $850 is just a basic fee. After I pay $850, the Peruvian government will estimate the value of the laptop. They are likely to put any value on it. They will argue (I was told by people that deal with this) that in Peru the laptop is worth, say, $15,000. It doesn't matter that the receipt says $4,000. The receipt just says that the value in London is $4,000, not in Peru. From their estimated amount they will charge me a percentage (nobody could of course tell me the exact percentage, but between 20% and 30%). That is another $3,000 to $4,500. Add $100 to $200 for the customs agent, a separate company. So, in total I have to pay $4,000 to $5,500 to the Peruvian government to get the laptop that was purchased in London for $4,000. Sounds great. Anyway, so far they couldn't even tell me how much I will have to pay for the import duty. Well, later they argued that this money could be refunded by the Peruvian government when I leave the country.

Refund from the Peruvian government? I don't think so. First I have to make a bank transfer from a bank chosen by the Peruvian government to pay for it. But in order to make that bank transfer from this bank, the bank requires me to open a bank account. Opening a bank account will cost me $xxx and in addition will take a day of my time and 3 copies of my passport, and 10 other forms. You get the picture that just paying to the government is a painful deal where I have to spend hours at the bank and pay money in order to be allowed to pay money. Getting money back will not be any easier. I will have a flight on Friday night and want the money. And of course on Friday night all offices are closed and they will tell me to come back on Monday to get my money. Of course with a flight on Friday I will not be in the country anymore on Monday. I can envision this real well, how keen the government will be to pay me my money back Friday at 10 p.m. at the airport. Yeah right, it will be very easy and yeah right, I will not have to pay anything in order to get my money, no forms, no handling fees, no US$-to-Nueva Sol-to-US$ conversion fees. In short, there is no way I will go through this process to pay a lot of money now and hope that I will maybe get some of it back when I leave the country.

Time for another meeting with my friends. Time to change the plan. More than a month has passed. My friends are tired. There are literally 6 people involved making phone calls to DHL, to customs, to the lawyer, etc. Everyday we discover something new, everyday we are told a new story, everyday the situation changes. I am close to exploding. Okay, if I cannot get the laptop, send it back to London, back to the sender. They can ship it to the US and I can pick it up there. Okay, now my friends start making phone calls to inform DHL and the customs officials that they should send the package back to London to the sender. That should be easy. That should be free. But no, customs says that we have to pay US$850 if we want to ship it back to the sender.

Excuse me? Why? We need to change the DHL shipping slip to do that and this change of that form costs $850. You got to be kidding? More phone calls, hours of phone calls to the customs handler, the boss of the customs handler, the section manager of the customs department. Always we give the same message "Please ship it back to the sender. There should be no custom duties for this." Always the same response "We need to change the paper form, that costs $850."

Now of course I want an explanation of why it costs $850 to change the form and why we have to change the form. I have to pay US$850 for the customs to do anythings. That is "like" a basic fee, because the word of my company shows up in the receiver box of the DHL form and the Peruvian customs argues "there is no person with this name in Peru, the form is wrong, you have to pay $850 for us to correct the form". $850 for nothing, for $850 I can fly from Peru to the US and back on coach. It would have been cheaper to fly to the US, buy it there and fly back again.

I am still not willing to pay the US$850 because this whole thing is a setup. To make things worse, the receiver box on the DHL forms read "Sra. Petty Babarski, c/o Manfred P., Company Name, address". I told them that it is normal that a company name shows up in the DHL form and that this should be no reason to request $850 to change this form, that the form in fact is correct. Well, I didn't tell them. My Spanish-speaking friends had to do that. Customs eventually accepted that, but I still need to pay $850 because the name "Petty Babarski" does not exist in the government registry of Peruvian citizens. Like it matters if the receiver is a Peruvian citizen or not. More bullshit from the customs people. I am sure that foreigner that do not show up in the Peruvian government registry can receive DHL packages. "No, no, no," the customs officials say, we have to pay $850 to change "Petty Babarski" to "Petrisia Babarski". Petty is the nick name of Petrisia or similar. (I can't remember her real first name, because everyone always called her Petty.) The phone calls continue. Everyday, another hour on the phone. Everyday more frustration.

Then the customs officials want a written sworn statement from Petty Babarski that she too wants that the laptop is being sent back and another written sworn statement that Petty is her nickname. Of course, every written sworn statement must be accompanied by a copy of the passport. I have enough experience with written sworn statements already to know that. I had written several written sworn statements to the customs officials already regarding my laptop, a written sworn statement that my name is Manfred P., a written sworn statement that I am the owner of the laptop, a written sworn statement that the value of the laptop is that is listed on the company invoice, a written sworn statement that I want the laptop to be sent back to the sender. And because faxes to the customs people get lost and because there are two people at customs and sometimes one needs the written sworn statement and sometimes the other person needs the written sworn statement, I already made it a habit to fax every written sworn statement, like any other fax to customs, four times. Twice to be sure they get it once, then to two locations to be sure the right guy gets it. Now I start obtaining written sworn statements from Petty. Oh my god, to make things worse, she is married and her passport has her maiden name and not Barbarski. So, the written sworn statement does not match the copy of her passport. More problems on the horizon.

We need to do more and more things. We fax more and more faxes to the customs people. We have the computer manufacturer Dell involved now as well, faxing receipts and invoices from London. Every fax I send I keep a copy because with customs one never knows. So, the stack of fax copies on my desk is growing by the day. We have spend close to 3 months now getting my laptop out of customs.

It is unbelievable. 3 months and 100 hours easily spend on the phone, writing sworn statements, sending faxes, making photocopies. Time for another crisis meeting with my friends. What else can we do? We now have to dig deep in the bag of tricks. A friend met a cab driver once who used to work for the police at the airport and is now retired and drives cabs. Maybe we can bribe him to get something going. Time to make calls to the cab company to see if we can find the driver. A week later we have a meeting on the street corner with the cab driver. Three of us walk down to the street corner, casually, like in the movies when the bad guys do a drug deal. Turns out it was the wrong cab driver. He too was an ex-cop but did never work at the airport. We briefly describe our situation but he thinks he cannot help. Another friend has someone who works at the airport. More phone calls. That person in turn made phone calls to her friends at the airport and to customs. To no avail.

Another crisis meeting. A friend of my friend knows the importer at Coca Cola Peru really well. That person is responsible for all imports that Coca Cola does into Peru. She deals with customs every day. We have her make phone calls now on our behalf.

In parallel I have started calling DHL. The people in Peru were just useless. The response was "We told you months ago that you should pay the temporary import fee, had you done so you would have your laptop already. There is nothing we can do for you. Good bye." So, I started calling DHL in the U.S.A. They told me that DHL is organized as a group of completely independent companies. DHL Peru has nothing to do with DHL USA, they are two completely separate companies and there is nothing that DHL USA can do for me. But DHL London is involved in the shipment so they could do something. I should call them. So, I do. I am told that they are not responsible and that they already have done so much for me. So much in fact that I should be very happy and impressed. I could not believe what I heard, did they just tell me that they have done so incredibly much for me that I should be happy? I have seen nothing. I need to stay cool here. "Can I please talk to your supervisor?" "No, we have already done everything we can." "Lady, you do not understand. I am very, very unhappy. My company has 40 office worldwide. We do our shipping exclusively with DHL. We are spending close to a million dollars on DHL per year. I will have my company, all 40 offices, take all our shipping business to your competition. Can I now please talk to your supervisor." "One moment please." Another hour on the phone, now I am told that if this were in London they could resolve this issue and that DHL could pay for any fees. But since this is in Peru and that is a different company they cannot do anything. "No, sir, you can do something. This is beyond my laptop now. We are talking about the complete annual shipping business of our company. DHL is a good company that tries to make its customers happy. As a courtesy gesture to make your customers happy you can pay for any fees, even at $2,000 that is very cheap for you. A very good deal to keep a customer. Personally, I don't care what needs to be done and how it is done. Just get this laptop into my hands or back to the sender, now and free." "We would like to do that, but we cannot." "Why not?" "This is a different company." "Listen, it is very simple. Wire $2,000 to DHL Peru, that other company, and ask them to pay for any fees and handle things. They should bribe the customs official if they have to. I don't care. I just want my laptop." "We cannot do this, but we will send more faxes to DHL Peru to ask for full cooperation."

We are now in month 4 of this odyssey. Then comes the news that customs will release the laptop to United Airlines, without any mayor charge. But we need one more written sworn statement that we will pay shipping cost. A few more faxes. In 3 days they say now should it be on a plane. The day 0 comes and we are informed that the plane was full, there was no room for any extra luggage. Was this all just another lie? Like the many lies I have heard before when they told me dozens of times that tomorrow all will be resolved just to tell me the next day that there is just one more little thing I have to do first. Another lie?

Now they say it will be on an American Airlines flight to Miami tomorrow. Now of course there are a couple more problems. By Peruvian law, any items remaining more than 90 days at Peruvian customs becomes automatically Peruvian property. My laptop has been sitting in Peruvian customs for more than 100 days now. So, officially it is no longer my laptop, it is already property of the Peruvian government. Another problem is that there is a storage fee. The Peruvian government took such nice care of my laptop, stored it for me in a safe place, that they of course deserve to be paid for this storage service. At 105 days or so, a storage fee of $10 per day of course is again another $1,050. But, like always, nobody knows exactly how much the daily storage rate is.

I have been given a new AWB number by DHL for the shipment to London via Miami. The day after the said flight to Miami and London, the DHL people still don't know where it is. The DHL web site where you can track your package, is all quiet about my package. After two days the computer, the web site of DHL, says "shipped". I still don't believe it until I get a phone call from London. The phone call eventually comes. Yes, in deed it has been received in London. Without any customs storage fee apparently.

So, now it just has to be shipped from London, via DHL again, to California. I am on a plane to California too, a trip that I had planned beforehand already. And in California after a bit more than 4 months I finally had the laptop in front of me. Best of all, nothing was broken and the Peruvian customs does not seem to have anything taken from the laptop, modem, cables, all were still there. This was the end of the nightmare. But even today it sometimes haunts me.

Let's do a quick count of who was involved in this little episode: 4 of my close friends doing 95 percent of the 100s of Spanish phone calls, a couple of Peruvians for occasional advice, the secretary of the partner company, her boyfriend the lawyer, the custom agent company, the girl friend of a friend, the person working at the airport, the ex-cop cabdriver, the lady from Coca Cola, the DHL person from the US, the DHL person from London, the DHL people from Peru, the person from Dell providing the receipts and invoices, the person from my company who had the laptop shipped via DHL, the shipping agent at the headquarters of my company in California, a few more people that helped on the sidelines, the friendly people of the Peruvian customs, and I. 30 people in total. A small army to wrench the laptop out of the arms of customs.

You think that this was an exception? Think again. I had 4 DHL shipments to Peru and each one was a disaster.

Shipment 2: I have hearing problems and need to take medication for that. Naturally that medication is not available in Peru. So, I kindly asked my brother to buy the things for me and to DHL it to me in Peru. The package contained 2 types of pills, one type of health tea and CAT scans of my brain. Price at the Austrian pharmacy (except the CAT scans of course which came from the hospital): $60. Price that I have to pay for the Peruvian customs for importing this: $100. Nice if the duties are higher than the original price. Worse, that I was desperately waiting for the pills because I had used up all the once I had. Delivery period for DHL from Austria to Peru including paperwork with customs (written sworn statements, etc.): 3 weeks. So much for the DHL ad slogan that they deliver anywhere and at the speed of a bullet.

Shipment 3: We had purchased a software product in the US and it was shipped as manuals and CD via DHL to Peru. One day we get a fax from customs. With the laptop episode customs seems to know us well by now. It is a 2-page fax that has on it a photocopy of a CD. I am very puzzled. What is this? Who is making jokes with me? Who is faxing me a photocopy of a software CD? Only then do I realize that the fax is from the Peruvian customs. They have opened the DHL package, have opened the software product, have taken the CD out, walked to the copier, made a photocopy and then faxed it to me. The fax didn't say much. Time again to make phone calls and to find out what this means. On the phone we are told that we have to provide a written sworn statement, etc. Please not again, please no more written sworn statement. Please no more faxes. We decided that it is a lot better to just leave the product, manuals and CD at customs, a present so to speak from us to the Peruvian customs than to spend hours on the phone again trying to obtain it.

Shipment 4: My girl friend took some pictures of herself on a weekend trip and wanted me to see them. So, she created a photo album with photos, poems and a lot of love. Then she FedEx-ed it to me in Peru. This package was lost at customs. Suddenly nobody knew anymore where it should be. For 3 weeks was total silence. Nobody contacted me. My girlfriend made phone calls in Spain to try to find out what had happened. FedEx told her there that they are trying to locate (note: locate, not deliver) the package. After about 3 weeks FedEx calls me and asks me if I have ever received a package. I thought it was hilarious that FedEx called me to find out where my package is. Of course I had never heard or seen anything. This was the first time that I had been contacted by anyone. Another 2 weeks passed by and still nothing. We made a lot of bad jokes already. We envisioned all the guys at customs sitting at the lunch table with their greasy fingers looking at the pictures of my girl friend, making male macho jokes about her and enjoying it thoroughly. We thought that the photos were never lost, they just needed so much time to allow every employee at customs to find enough time to truly and leisurely study all the photos. Maybe they were already used for a month as pinup pictures of some sort in the locker room of the customs agents. Or maybe the customs people couldn't find consensus on how much they should charge me for the photos. Clearly, the better the photos the higher the price they would ask me. 5 weeks after sending finally the customs contacted me. What did they want? You guessed it. They wanted a written sworn statement that there are photos in the package. Like I, who has never seen the package, would really know what is inside the package. A pretty stupid thing to start with. Well, if they ask for it, I will have to provide such a written sworn statement if I want the package. So, I am forced to make a written sworn statement on something that I cannot know. Anyway, it is not the first written sworn statement on something I don't know. I have learned from the past and provide another written sworn statement that the value of the photos is $0. Well that didn't help much. I had to pay $57 for import and handling duties. Import and handling duties of $57 for a handful a private personal photos and a few handwritten poems? I don't understand. But I am sure something is not right here. Furthermore, at Peruvian salary rates, $57 is most likely the weekly salary of a customs officer. Was there a customs officer who spent 40 hours inspecting my package?

What is the moral of this story? Never send anything, and I mean anything, to Peru. If it is expensive, it might be cheaper to fly out of Peru and pick it up in person. If it is personal and without practical value, try to live without it.

The Good and The Bad

There is more to Lima and Peru then just the Ugly. For other sides of Peru read "Part 1: The Good" and "Part 2: The Bad" of this trilogy.