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Today's adventures with customs



At 05:29 PM 4/1/2002, John C. Worden wrote:
>What the hell, did Canada become a dictatorship or something?  Maybe you
>should just have someone from the US bring the stuff over.  I've never been
>inspected(and the last time I had the truck with a cover on the bed and 2 semi
>automatic rifles from a hunting trip and i told them I had guns in the back)

John, that was my experience in the past as well -- as was Mardak's 
impression of the CDN guys being nice and the US guys being pricks.  That 
was -- until 2 weeks ago.

A friend and I packed up a trailer full of Jetta remains and hauled them up 
to The Mad Bastard's place.  At the border, I can understand, we looked a 
bit suspicious.  2 guys in a Honda with a trailer on the back packed 
beautifully and covered up with canvas.  So off to the inspection we 
went.  No surprise there.

The surprise was that the CDN customs officials were assholes!  We had all 
the parts in the trailer, and then 3 dufflebags in the car -- one with a 
gift for Jason, one with my clothes, and one with my buddy's shit.  And 
then a couple CD cases, laptop bags, bla bla.  The one cop was SCREAMING at 
us that he wanted to see everything.  Mind you, we were completely 
cooperative and moving quickly to unhook all the canvas in the trailer as 
fast as we could and helping them lift things to inspect everything.... 
with 3 guys standing in 3 different spots around the car screaming to hurry up.

The guy was like "GET ALL YOUR SHIT OUT OF THE CAR NOW.  I WANT TO SEE IT 
ALL ON THE GROUND NOW! **NOW!**"  -- as we're taking it out of the 
car.  Then he proceeds to berate us for taking so much stuff with us for 
the weekend "What is this shit, you guys have everything but the kitchen 
sink in the car with you..."

I explained our (true) story about 4.3x10^7 times, which was that we were 
going up for a bachelor party.  I had one gift with me for the bachelor, 
and the parts in the trailer were going to him since he's a member of VWoT 
and he would be able to disburse the parts amongst his club.  They had been 
in my buddy's mom's garage for a year and she wanted them out -- so this 
was the perfect way of getting rid of them.  I told them that I would try 
to recover our gas money for the trip up, but I'd value all the parts at 
like $150 max anyway, and be glad to pay on that if need be.

Long story short, he sent me in to pay our duty, and they set up a nice 
little trap.  As I'm walking towards the officer behind the counter, he 
said "No worries, he made a mistake oootside, if it's all a gift, then 
don't worry abooot it."  I smelled a rat immediately and said "Whoa whoa -- 
wait a second, it's not all a gift... " and explained my story again, as 
another officer behind him starts laughing and says "oooh, you just ruined 
your day guy -- you' just cost yourself a lot of money".

So at the conclusion of my story, I said to the guy (the only one who was 
nice btw) that I had stated a value of CDN$150 for the parts because that 
was the _maximum_ I expected to sell the parts for.  I had also claimed my 
US$75 gift to my friend and detailed on numerous occasions the contents of 
the car allthewhile being verbally assaulted by another customs agent.  I, 
therefore, had been more than completely honest, and I had nothing to 
hide.  Apparently, he agreed, because he shot a smile at me and said 
"Allright -- get ooot and enjoy the stag, eh?".

Getting back into the US with a 32,000 mile 2.0 was a whole lot easier... 
no questions, all we said was "Blown motor we picked up for parts... worked 
out perfectly cause we needed some weight back there to keep the trailer 
from bouncing around."  "Sure, you fellas have a safe trip back home."

So, in conclusion, I don't know what happened to the Canadian border patrol 
up there.  It is their job and responsibility to be courteous and obviously 
that has gone completely "ooot" the window.  I understand that security is 
a concern for all of us -- and I have no problem emptying everything from 
my car and stripping to my bare ass if necessary to protect all of our 
safety -- but there's no reason for customs agents to be rude to you while 
they're doing it.

I'm ooootta here. :)
Jason