Project "Second Try"

In December/January of 2008, our company imported nearly $10000 worth of computer equipment for internal use. It was a nightmare scenario where we were given problems until the very end. My office manager visited the customs house and customs committee nearly 15 times. In the end, we received our hardware, but later found out that customs had overcharged us.

Today is the start of the new attempt to import equipment in Armenia.

This time, I will document every step in this process and post a complete account of our activities. Perhaps this time things will be different.

In this "Project Second Try", we will try to import nearly $5-10K worth of computer equipment. We plan to buy it from an online retailer in the US, ship it to a shipping company, which will then package our equipment and send it to Armenia. Once the equipment arrives in Armenia, we expect to receive a notice from Armenian Customs, after which we have to deal with lots of paperwork.

According to our experience last time, this is the paperwork we needed:

- Contract with exporting company
- Proof of payment to exporting company (bank wires)
- Invoice from exporting company

Last time, we had all of the above, but customs informed us that we were missing paperwork, such as "export certificate" and "certification of origin". We inquired in the US and no one in the export business advised us to get these documents (neither were they aware of them) for the type of goods we were exporting from the US.

We will call the person at Customs Committee for a better explanation of what we need this time.

Lets hope this works better than last time.