Baksheesh

When my eighth-grade biology teacher asked our class if any of us remembered the word for white blood cells, a guy named Jonathan Harvey raised his hand and shouted, ‘Homocyte!’  The word he was half-remembering was phagocyte, which is a type of white blood cell.  If you trace the Greek root of that term, it means ‘a cell that eats things’.  He had confused the Greek root phag-, meaning ‘eat’ with the Greek root homo-, meaning ‘the same’, because he was a thirteen year old boy and, well, people had less enlightened ideas about sex and gender back then. 

The phag- root comes into Diner Greek as fagito, meaning ‘food’ and fay!, which means, ‘Eat!’  The Greek comes from Proto Indo-European *bhag– which meant ‘share out, apportion, get a share’.  So the Ancient Greek phagein literally meant ‘to have a share of food’.  You also see the root in the Indic bhagah, ‘allotter, distributor, master, lord’ (Bhagavad-Gita, e.g.), Czech bohaty, ‘rich’, and the Yiddish nebbish (lit. ne-bohaty).  In Persian, the root becomes bakshidan, ‘to give, apportion out’.  Baksheesh originally meant something that was apportioned and given out.

As borrowed from the Persian, the term appears in several languages.  It originated in the Muslim world, but it has since spread beyond that.  In some contexts, it can mean alms or charity.  In other contexts, it can mean a tip, a sign of veneration, or a sacrifice to the gods.  It can also mean palm-greasing, bribery, or outright corruption.  In English, it carries connotations of sleaze.

A sewer jetter has been causing me brain damage lately.  I ordered the machine from Alibaba in December.  To help me get it through customs, I hired a customs broker named Clearit USA.  The manufacturer did not supply certain information that Clearit USA said was needed for the item to be cleared by US customs.  Clearit USA informed me that they could not help me solve the problem, fired me as a client, and refused to help me get a refund.  When we last left the narrative, I was going to take the loss, the item was stuck in limbo, and some CBP agent was going to take it home and sell it on Ebay, or use it as a jungle-gym for his kids.

But – the story might have a happy ending.  It is not over, but I am hopeful.  The fat lady might sing yet.

After Clearit USA quit, I googled ‘customs brokers – New York’, did some due diligence and made some calls.  One guy, based on Long Island, called me back.  He told me that I was probably up shit’s creek, but that Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, has an office for problems like this.  He gave me their email address.  I sent an email asking if they knew where the item was and whether it was stuck in limbo. Later that day, a one-line email arrived that read ‘The package has cleared.’  I re-read the message a few times.  It seemed legit, because it came from the CBP email address and the agent included his or her badge number in the signature line.  After my hands stopped shaking, I emailed back, ‘Thank you!  What are the next steps?’ 

‘Contact the shipper’.

‘Thank you again!’

The only shipper I knew of was a logistics provider named FCC based in California hired by the manufacturer.  FCC referred me to another logistics provider, STG, who owns the warehouse in New Jersey where the item had been delivered.  STG told me that I would have to pay a few hundred bucks more to have the item delivered to northern New York.  They also told me that, in order to release it, they needed an ACE release and a shipper’s release.  I googled ‘ACE– Customs’ and found that the term stood for Automated Customs Entry.  I emailed the lady at STG, ‘Where can I get an ACE release?  She emailed back,

‘You get it from your broker’ 

‘I am not working with a broker.’

‘Sorry – we need it.’

I emailed the CBP again, to ask how I could get an ACE release.  The agent emailed back with a PDF of the Notice of Arrival for the item stamped with a red stamp with the insignia of the CBP and the message, ‘This is all you need to clear the item.  Do not let the shipper tell you otherwise’.  I wanted to email back, ‘You make me go all gooey inside’, but instead I wrote, ‘Thanks’.

I forwarded the stamped form to the lady at STG.  She insisted that she needed an ACE release.  I pushed back and she bumped it up the chain of command at STG.  I will simplify for narrative clarity here, but the email correspondence was like pulling teeth.  Imagine something like this, with worse spelling:

Them: You need to file the form.

Me: What form, and how do I file it?

Them: The Form 8397.  You file it on the website.

Me: What website?

Them: The Shipper’s website.

Me: Which shipper?  You did not give me a name.

After STG accepted the customs release, they told me that I needed a shipper’s release.  To get that, I needed to pay a fee to FCC and wait for them to send a form to STG.  So I downloaded Zelle to my phone, sent the fee to FCC, and currently remain in this position awaiting orders.  If I understand the process correctly, that is the last step before the item is put on a truck and sent to northern New York – but I have been wrong before.  I will believe the jetter is free when it leaves New Jersey airspace.

The process has taught me two things.  The first is that, when goods change hands, everyone wants their piece.  The fewer the parties, the lower the costs.  Here is a list of who is involved, what that has been paid, and what it was paid for:

• Manufacturer – $1,998.50 – Purchase + delivery to port;
• Clearit USA – $131 – Brain-damage and bad advice;
• FCC – $358.10 – Handling and destination charges;
• STG – $684.60 – Port fees and delivery to park.

I thought that I was buying a jetter for a little under two grand.  In fact, if everything works out, I will be out $3,172.20 plus gray hairs, liver damage and broken blood vessels.  That’s less than what I would have paid at Harbor Freight, but it is not as good a deal as it might have initially appeared.

The second thing I learned is that government can be a force for good.  The only party to the transaction that did its job well – that was responsive and easy to communicate with and that did not demand any baksheesh – was the CBP.  The inefficiency in the process was purely a byproduct of private-sector action.  I do not know why the people at Shanghai PINFL Electrical and Mechanical Technology Co., Ltd, Clearit USA, FCC and STG acted the way they did, but I suspect that market forces caused the failure.  The market created no incentive for them to do much except take my money and duck.  Anything beyond that would be working too hard and sticking their neck out.  The CBP agents, by contrast, behaved like conscientious public servants.  Suck on that, Milton Freedman.