My generator on the hydro system died in Feb this year, and I still haven’t managed to get a replacement. The type I need; a 2 bearing, 4 pole, 1500RPM, single phase, 3KW, 240V, seems to be as rare as hen’s teeth except in China where they have everything, and will ask what colour you would like that in. So I ordered one from China at the absurdly low price of A$200. From the pics on their website, there were hundreds on the factory floor in stock. In reality, they don’t have stock as that takes capital investment, instead they make them after the order comes in.
So after some negotiation on the shipping cost, I was never going to haggle over the cost of the generator, I sent them some money. Apart from the very lengthy delay where I began to suspect it was a complete internet scam and I’d been had, they got it on a boat to Brisbane with a freight cost of just A$60 for a 65 kg by .09 cubic meter crate. Brilliant. I have a generator in Brisbane for just A$260!
Then the nightmare started. Unlike things I have ordered over the internet that arrive by plane that just turn up in my mailbox, if it comes by sea, you need paperwork. Reams of it. A little bit of it from me, but the majority supplied by the Chinese manufacturer, Mindong. to be supplied on their lettterhead, stamped signed and sealed with all the details of ship name voyage number, shipping number, times, dates ports, shipping materials and if it has been treated, if so provide certificate under AS10452, commercial (not profoma) invoice, packing decalration, packing list, and a whole heap of other documents I can’t even remember. Then I find that to crank the handle of this elaborate bureaucratic machinery, I need a clearance broker. Then I find that the system works like a game of Chinese whispers. The entity that has all the questions to answer, customs, doesn’t talk to the party that has the answers to all these forms, Mindong. They only talk to the clearance broker, charging a handsome fee, who talks to me, who relays it to some poor girl in an office in China, who has no direct knowledge if the machine was packed with organic material for instance or if the the timber crate was treated according to AS10452 etc. She then relays it back to me, and I relay it back to the clearance broker, who submits this to customs who set the rules.
I should point out there are some complicating factors to this broken system. You probably know that in China they don’t generally speak English. And the English they have to digest is bureaucratic English. I don’t speak bureaucratic English. I feel sorry for the poor girl Lisa tang at Mindong, who tries to satisfy the crazy foreigner’s appetite for paperwork. Another complication is some computer difficulties I had about the time the boat was nearly at Brisbane. My computer went up in smoke. Real acrid smoke. Dead as a maggot. Being rather remotely located and trying to run a business largely dependent on e-mail, I borrowed a friend’s 10 year old laptop which was good for a couple of days though you couldn’t see into the corners of the screen where all the important commands are because of screen decay, but then refused to boot up complaining that the file ‘superblock’ could not be read. I have no idea what the superblock is, but it does sound important. Then getting the use of laptops that I borrowed from guests so I could check e-mails by webmail occasionally, but of course whatever I could save went with them. My excellent friend Robert who gave the previous computer to me, was able to install my hard drive into a computer he just had lying round (so he tells me), and able to update the drive to suit the new architecture. Brilliant. I don’t have to go through hours of agony installing programs and trying to import old files and make everything fit. I wanted to pay him for his expertise, time and effort, not to mention his computer, but he wouldn’t have a bar of it.
So what with 4 different computers, 2 different delivery systems by e-mail program or webmail and often duplicated, I didn’t know what e-mails were saved where. Also I was sent some documents from the clearance broker that contained wrong information about the boat and voyage number (as if that materially affects the lump of metal in the crate). Last night I told the clearance broker to drop the effing crate into the harbour. OK, I spat the dummy. Totally exceeded my stupidity tolerance limitToday I got an e-mail which ignored my fit, and kindly informed me that they would either start charging ‘storage fees’ or an extra $150 ‘customs inspection fee’ if I didn’t comply by providing a valid ‘Packing Declaration’. If the nice lady in China doesn’t send me completed document, where I coached her through the answers, I think I will be without power and in debt for the rest of my life. Unable to satisfy the paperwork, unable to liberate the machine.
So the Chinese could manufacture and deliver to Brisbane a generator for less than A$300. To get it from Brisbane to a depot in Cairns will cost me at least $750 dollars. I did get an e-mail somewhere which detailed the costs on the Australian side which had numerous fees including ‘re-engineering fee’. WTF? The other fees (about 7) equally improbable.
Though the manufacturer was slow to get their act together, they delivered at minimal cost. The real villains in the piece are the demanding requirements of Australian customs and the clumsy, no dysfunctional, system of communication. If I don’t provide the exact paperwork, customs will demand about $150 to open the box. I actually thought it was their job to open boxes. It seems if you have a choke point, you can demand fees. Since starting this blob, I have had a return e-mail from the manufacturer. They can’t agree on what ship it was sent on, or the voyage number. Apparently, the same crate was sent on three different ships. This is entirely possible for quantum particles, but unlikely for a 65kg lump of metal. Here I make an admission that could possibly land me in jail. The long-suffering Lisa in China sent the document in Word instead of jpg, so I was able to change the details of what ship it arrived on to correspond with the details of what the clearance broker and customs required. Yes, resorting to forgery to get all the little paper ducks in a row.
So the cost to to get it about 10,000kms from China was A$58. The cost to get it from Brisbane to Cairns, about 1,800kms will be over A$800. Not to mention the time wasted on paperwork. Australia, is something wrong with this picture? Are we choking on bureaucracy? Are we the most inefficient and expensive country in the world? I think so.
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