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The Indonesians deliver to a port
near you. This is not like having UPS deliver the chess set from Indonesia to
you. The Indonesians do not cover your port costs nor the cost to deliver the
chess set to you from the port.
Almost everyone is surprised by
how much they must pay for port costs. This includes many port handling
charges, such as a $35 fork lift charge even if the shipment weighs 10 lbs.
Inspection charges can easily reach many hundreds of dollars, all at the sole
discretion of US Customs and Homeland Security. This is getting more stringent
and more expensive every day, especially with the US State Department issuing
its warnings about Indonesia being a hotbed of Muslim extremism. These fees
need to be paid to several different companies and agencies, most of whom
require cashiers checks or wire transfers.
Then there are the actual customs
fees, which you are not even allowed to pay unless you are a bonded customs
broker. If you get through that, you will learn that neither UPS, Fedex, or the
common trucking carriers are allowed to pick up your shipment. You will have to
make arrangements separately with the exclusive and expensive truckers who have
port access.
If any of this delays your
shipment from leaving the harbor, you will be assessed additional per/day
storage fees. If you fail to pay any of these fees in a timely manner, any of
the companies and agencies involved have the right to confiscate your shipment
or destroy it if they feel it has insufficient collateral to cover the mounting
fees.
And finally, US Customs will ask
you what species of teak the giant chess set is made of. Give them the wrong
answer and you have given them a chess set, and possibly a fine as
well.
If you doubt any of this, ask an
importer or importing agent in your Yellow Pages. You will end up hiring one
anyway.
We buy from the same Indonesian
vendors, but we are constantly battling the quality standards found in rural
Indonesia with the much higher quality expectations of Americans. Buying
direct, you do not benefit from our quality standards and our repeat buying
volume to enforce those quality standards.
If any of the above goes wrong,
or if for any reason your shipment doesn't even arrive, remember how you paid
the Indonesians. It was either a wire transfer or a cashiers check, and it was
the full amount. That means you have no recourse except to try to sue the
vendor in an Indonesian court.
Why are we
telling you this? Because so many of you have approached us after an
attempt to import directly from Indonesia has gone sour. We do have plenty of
experience at this, but we don't have a "friend" at U.S. Customs who can make
the problems go away. It just has to be done right.
There is a way to get a giant
teak chess set from Indonesia without any of these problems. Order it from a
US-based importer. They have the experience to overcome the problems of
importing. Because they import by the container-full, all the costs are divided
among many chess sets.
More importantly, you have a
company behind the product, a company subject to US business
laws.
Among the few US companies
importing giant chess sets from Indonesia, only one imports them by the
container load, and stocks them here in a big US warehouse, ready to ship to
you immediately. That company is MegaChess. The
others are individuals working out of a bedroom, willing to take your order,
only to forward it to the Indonesians. |
