I Got My Mac Back
This morning I took an early morning trip to office to meet Marcela (our super awesome HR lady), who was going to take me to customs and help me get my computer back. Neither of us had ever dealt with customs before so it was quite the learning process.
When we arrived at customs we were met outside by a helpful man who turned out to be the manager of the customs office. In retrospect I believe he was just waiting outside for a gringo like me to come along so he could get a little “tip” for his services. Unfortunately I never got his name so I will simple refer to him as The Customs Guys (TCG).
TCG first told us that the computer could not be considered “personal” because it was not a laptop. Why others in the office have been able to bring down computers, in some cases multiple computers on the same trip, I’ll never know. Marcela and I thought we should first double check with Continental Airlines to see what they recommended. TCG followed us to the Continental office where some sort of agreement was reached where we’d pay a small customs fee of ~$50US. Using a the standard 15% customs fee rate this turned out to be a pretty good deal and I decided to go for it rather than to try to keep arguing.
Marcela and I then got in her car with TCG and he directed us to another building near the airport where we had an invoice created from “Circuit City INC” which said I bought the computer for $500 two years ago. We then headed back to the regular customs building now that we had all of our “proper” documentation.
Over the next couple of hours we spent the time between visiting a customs lady 3 times, another manager 3 times, the cashier twice and waited a number of times on the bench. Marcela was awesome throughout the whole process especially since none of the people we dealt with spoke english and she had to do most of the speaking for me. I don’t know how I would have got this done without her and I cannot thank her enough.
After all the paper work and waiting finished TCG escorted us to the dock where he took my computer out of customs and loaded it into Marcela’s car. We then thanked him for all his help and he said, with a smile on his face, that he was not going to charge anything for his service but if we wanted to “tip” him that would be nice. 5000 Colones later we were on our way back to the office with computer in hand.
5 Comments
Jackie on April 17th, 2009
Guess you aren’t in Kansas anymore hey Dorthy!! Awesome!!
Shai on April 17th, 2009
Least when some of us come visit you, we’ll know what not to bring… or bring extra grease money.
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Jeremy on April 16th, 2009
That’s awesome – you should have bought extended warranty from Circuit City Inc for the $10 “tip” while you were there – it might make warranty work valid while your down there!