WWTBAM Bored

We got a new problem brewing right here in River City (River Charles, that is). We had a UPS shipment from Canada. This in itself is not news. What is news is that the shipper didn't pay the customs fee & bill us for it; they left UPS to collect their $30 pieces of, uh, dollars. It is novel that $200 worth of stuff from Canada gets hit with customs fees at all. Very novel. The new novel of the month.

I initially misunderstood how novel, & chalked this 1st instance up to "little company that doesn't know how to ship stuff right". We have talked to UPS about this stuff & "they don't want to get involved". Except that they will collect the dough for customs. (Which believe me is way better than having your stuff impounded at customs. We've been there too.) But they won't prepay it & have the vendor add it to the bill the vendor sends you. Which is exactly what the vendor does do with "how much did the truck/plane transport cost" i.e. normal shipping charges.

But today I was talking to another Little Canadian Company in order to avoid the same scenario & they said their American customers had just started getting hit with this. They don't use UPS, they use another shipper (LTD?) & that shipping co also doesn't want to get involved with prepaying customs.

We have a company that handles our "real" customs jobs (big big [both in size & cost] shipments from Europe, not teeny packages from Canada) & will be talking to them tomorrow.

For a private citizen this latest US Gov scam XXXXX money-collecting project just means another $30.00 or so out of pocket. For an Institution, with charges going to all kinds of carefully audited internal billing codes assigned to federal US Gov contracts & such, getting that extra $30.00 in cash or check on very short notice is a real headache. (UPS was nice enough to deliver the goods & say they'll come back for the money next day, but even next-day is not enough turn-around time when several departments, some very bureaucratic already & another, mine, woefully becoming that way rapidly are involved with both getting the quickie funds issued & then billed out to the proper internal code.)

Many years ago a friend of mine graduated from McGill University in Montreal. Since he lived in the U.S., when they mailed his diploma to him, it went through customs.

The envelope that his diploma came in had the following information stamped on it:

"Contents: 1 Diploma; No Commercial Value"

---Jay (Until this year, the Quebec legislature was bicameral, consisting of the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly. In that year the Legislative Council was abolished, and the Legislative Assembly was renamed the National Assembly. Quebec was the last province to abolish its legislative council. If you know how many years ago this event took place then you know the rest...)

We got a new problem brewing right here in River City (River Charles, that is


I might prefer the problem the Standells had...


Yeah, down by the river
Down by the banks of the river Charles (aw, that's what's happenin' baby)
That's where you'll find me
Along with lovers, fuggers, and thieves (aw, but they're cool people)
Well I love that dirty water
Oh, Boston, you're my home (oh, you're the Number One place)
Frustrated women (I mean they're frustrated)
Have to be in by twelve o'clock (oh, that's a shame)
But I'm wishin' and a-hopin, oh
That just once those doors weren't locked (I like to save time for
my baby to walk around)
Well I love that dirty water
Oh, Boston, you're my home (oh, yeah)

That was exactly my inspiration. No-one, in real life, ever calls it the River Charles except those Standells (& maybe a passing native speaker of French). On the other hand, I am always really annoyed when I hear "There's A Panther In Michigan" by the generally astute Chicago-dwelling Mike Smith in which he repeated refers to "The Raisin River", when nobody, including us barely-passed-high-school-French speakers from actually around there, call it anything but "the River Raisin". And that nuclear plant that almost exploded a few (maybe more than a few) years ago is on the River Rouge.


"Panther in Michigan" By Mike Smith

There's a panther in Michigan
Don't that make your Halloween
There's a panther in Michigan
Although he is seldom seen
And he's following the water
And the ways of the Indian
And he's crossing the border
To Indiana

There's an awful lot of cover
Down along the Raisin River
We would set up on the one side
He'd show up on other
I know people used to wonder
Why we couldn't catch the panther
There's an awful lot of cover
Down along the Raisin River

When a farmer in Manchester called me
I was there in minutes
Following a trail of feathers
Thru the high grass when he screamed
Thirty-four years in law enforcement
Man I never been so scared
I could see where he was going
By the way the grass was moving

There's a panther in Michigan
Don't that make your Halloween
There's a panther in Michigan
Although he is seldom seen
And he's following the water
And the ways of the Indian
And he's crossing the border
To Indiana

People who know panthers say
That they are lazy hunters
And they'll take a prey that's wounded
Over one that's healthy
And he might mistake some child
Playing in his sandbox
For some kind of wounded critter
Down along the Raisin River

Test drivers saw the panther
At the Chrysler proving grounds
It was during hunting season
He was out there on the track
'Cause he knew if he went in there
He'd be safe from hunters
He's an uncanny animal

Recorded on: Michael Smith/Love Stories, Anthology One

I'm assuming that it the same Mike Smith who wrote (and Steve Goodman so often covered) 'The Dutchman'?

---Jay (If you know how many years ago Steve Goodman started performing at the Earl of Old Town in Chicago then you also know the number of days until ...)

Taking into consideration that customs and borders and all the stuff that I THOUGHT was going to wither away with NAFTA -- seems to have withered away but only for big corporations.

And the thought of dealing any sort of commerce with departments who have more acronyms than the NATO command center makes me cringe.

Which means I know less than zero f..ing all.

But what I read:

The fee for processing manufactured goods (MFP) previously exempting Canada now does not exempt Canada but only stuff which is covered by NAFTA and the exporter or importer has to make the specific declaration that it is covered by NAFTA even if there is no duty payable whether or not the goods are covered by NAFTA.

At least, that is what I take from the references I read. THe official docs emphasize that the power and the costs were always there, but AFAIK in practice a thirty buck charge on every cross border commercial transaction, I dont remember.

Another hit on the manufacturing/commercial small business exporting sector, more paperwork, more cost, and this sector is already down in flames in Canada. And its against the principle of free trade even allowable under the agreements.

http://subscript.bna.com/SAMPLES/itd.ns ... enDocument

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:3z ... ent=safari

http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery ... TOC_138492&

http://regulations.justia.com/view/89799/

No doubt there are people here who do really know about this.

Our usual solution to "how to avoid customs" is "ship by air". However, though I am not 100% sure, because of changes in our ordering procedure here lately (read; massive scary changes in my job) whether the orders under discussion shipped by air or not, my educated guess is that they did. This is because many companies use the same rule I do; if it weighs less than 30 lbs & ships from more than 300 miles away, ship by 2nd-Day air. Other companies you have to specifically request that of, & I'm currently out of the all-important request loop for some orders. Others I'm still in the loop for; I thought the person I talked to yesterday understood I meant "2nd-Day air".

If 2nd-Day (& all other) air shipments are being hit by customs regs too, all it means is your stuff gets impounded closer to home (Boston being a port of entry for customs).

I talked to the company that normally handles our "know this needs a broker" imports, & they gave me instructions about using their Global service & listing them as the customs contact (which I already knew; I just wanted them in the loop on this one). They say they haven't seen a lot of these surprise customs charges yet, but they did cite one recent one for another university. I have a feeling that the "not in NAFTA" clause you pinpointed is exactly why the bigger, "more likely to export to the US" Canadian companies we use have had their stuff sail through without a hitch. For the smaller companies, & for me, its going to be a real bummer.