From: "Marvin Kaye" <marv@lancaironline.net>
Subject: Re: US Customs Service
To: lml
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 02:53:33 -0500
Message-ID: <web-2752728@logan.com>
In-Reply-To: <a3.4ca361e8.2cedb1a3@aol.com>
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Posted for RWolf99@aol.com:

And you thought the FAA was bad?  Well, I'm about to do battle with the US 
Customs Service and I'd appreciate advice from anyone who has done this 
before.

Actually, my problem isn't all that bad, but it is annoying.  I bought an MT 
propeller from the Wisconsin sales rep at Oshkosh this summer and it is now 
waiting for me at the local airport (Denver International).  First question 
the 
shipper had for me was "who's your customs agent?".  My response was "Huh?  
What's that?" or something equally intelligent.  Seems they want you to 
believe 
that there is an impenetrable mountain of paperwork and they will just make it 
disappear if you give them about $200 (this in addition to the $750 or so 
that it cost to ship the thing from Germany).

Well, I'm a cheap bastard when it comes to forking money over to government 
bureaucracies so I printed off some explanations from some web site and spent 
most of my time on the stairmaster after work puzzling it out.  (It was a 
great 
way to take my mind off the boring exercise machine, by the way, but it 
didn't do my blood pressure any good.)

Near as I can tell, there is some duty (tax) required of about $40.  No 
problem -- I'll pay that.  Then there is a "surety bond" required to cover any 
future obligations related to imports.  However, near as I can tell, once 
you've 
paid the duty there are no possible future claims.  Don't know if the 
government agrees with that so I might have to fork over $40 or so to a 
licensed 
customs agent for a bond.  But what I don't want to do is to pay $120 for them 
to 
fill out a one page form and file it for me.  Which they do electronically 
anyway.  I don't want to support a cottage industry whose sole purpose is to 
insulate me from the government bureaucracy.  At least, not yet.  So if anyone 
has 
gone through this process before, I love to hear how it's done.

BTW, I live about 30 minutes from the airport and I was planning on picking 
up the prop in my wife's monster pickup truck, thus saving another $25.  So 
since I'm headed out there anyway, why not swing past customs to file the 
form?  
I mean, how hard can it be, really?

- Rob Wolf

[I'm surprised to hear that they're asking for a duty payment on that prop. 
 Several years ago I was helping someone on the LML bring in a set of John 
Spry's shocks from Oz and I spent some time talking with customs about the 
shipment, learning a bit about what those high-priced customs agents do.  When 
I was asked by the guy at customs what kind of parts we were bringing in I had 
the idea in my head that anything that says "aircraft" on it is going to be 
charged outrageous fees just because of the "aircraft" label, so I told him 
the shipment was car parts, specifically, shock absorbers.  I was quoted some 
duty amount and our conversation continued.  Turned out the customs guy was a 
gear-head and he wanted to know more about these "custom" shocks all the way 
from down under, so I gave him a description and a bit later, after we'd 
become kind of friendly, I admitted that they were, in fact, airplane parts. 
 He told me that that's a different story and that there would be no duty on 
them.  Long story short, there isn't any duty on airplane parts.  Don't ask me 
why, but that's what I was told.  I'm curious why they're socking you with a 
$40 fee, unless it's not "duty" per se, but some other charge.  If it is duty, 
does that mean that the rules have changed?  If so, I'm not surprised... leave 
it to the guv.

    <marv>             ]