If You Are An Idiot, Press 1.

I am on hold with the Customs and Border Protection Agency of my great home country.

The menu is hilarious.  I can only imagine how many people call them with ridiculous questions, and I have little hope that my more complicated question will be able to be answered from this help line, but now I have to stay on just to see. There are 17 people in front of me.

I am calling, just so you know, to find out what documents I need to reimport my car at the suggestion of my relocation company agent.  She can't help me unless they ship the car themselves, and we are planning to drive the cars over the border and sell them ourselves before we leave.*  I went on the website she suggested, and looked, but while the Environmental Protection Agency offers a 66 page booklet on how to import a vehicle (the abridged version is 22 pages), there is no quick, easy and clear way to find out what I need.  Oh, Canada, I miss your Service Canada centers already.

I called the number at the bottom of the screen.  I urge you to call it, if only for fun.  877-CBP-5511.  The menu is something like: If you think are wondering if you need a passport to go anywhere outside of the United States, call the State Department. If you are wondering if you can take Aunt Sally's special meatloaf to Canada, call 411 to get the number of Canada's embassy. No, we don't have that number. Please don't waste our time with asking that question.  We don't know that country's regulations. (They actually say this.)  Then they put on a Santana version of slow jazz and update you with the number of people ahead of you. (7 now.)

It isn't enough to make me a libertarian or a tea partier, but it is enough to make me question my fellow citizenry.  Then again, I answered phones for a Member of Congress. I regularly had crazy people call, and it could be pretty entertaining, so in some ways I feel bad that I am bringing a regular problem to the good people of the CBP help line.

I have 2 people in front of me now, so I will have to go.

************

Fortunately, the Southern woman I spoke with was nice and helpful, and I was able to get the information I needed. It involves 3+ forms and likely a call/email to the port** as well.  Car importation is a full time job, I tell you. Fun!

Hooray for the US Government!




*This is part of a complicated scheme where you can temporarily bring in your car from your own country, but you can't sell it there and you have to leave with it.  Which would be fine if we were either a. going back to our home country or b. bringing our cars with us. But we aren't doing either, hence the need to reimport them to the US and then sell them there.  Jolly good fun, don't you know.

**Otherwise known as the Lewiston Bridge.