The Subtle Pleasures of the Ukraine Customs Service

Our good friends over at the US-Ukraine Business Council sent their members a wonderful email detailing typical expierences in getting packages through customs. For anyone who has ever interacted with a Eastern European customs agent, it makes for a hillarious read.

The highlights:

--A major soft drink company imports samples of plastic bottle caps with their logo on them...Shipment is not released because Ukrainian customs requires an official letter from the company that the bottle caps will not be used for medical purposes.

--While on a business trip a person forgot his pants in the hotel. The hotel sent them to the person in Kyiv by express mail indicating a value of $50. Ukrainian customs increased the value to $400. The person refused to pay the $40 duty required by customs for his own pants. Pants shipped back to hotel.

--Online shoppers living in Ukraine you must be prepared to undergo the following steps to customs clear an express shipment (books, a teddy bear, t-shirts, set of screwdrivers, etc):

a) Prepare copy of your passport, translated invoice, detailed description of the content;

b) Produce a hard copy of the declaration M-16

c) Spend an hour or so in a line to the customs chief to have the name of inspector who'll be dealing with your case;

d) Spend another hour plus in line to see "your" inspector

e) Wait 1 to 2 hours until shipment physically checked (Customs maintains the Soviet policy of 100% control over every package!)

g) Spend 30 minutes in line to pay the duties

NOTE: This is the best case scenario. If there's a single deviation (e.g. $1 difference between the declared and actual value) the whole process starts over again from the beginning.

The US-Ukraine Business Council also informs us that, amazingly, Ukraine has the highest return rate for express packages in the world.

How is that possible?