[jawngee]

Yeah try importing a CPAP from the states into Vietnam if you want a real adventure.

A $650 cpap machine costs well over $2K here. So I thought I'd import one. Apparently you need a prescription in the states? Ok, get a "prescription" from an online service that basically just asks you if you snore over a video call. Amazing.

Buy machine and have it sent to a freight forwarding service. They fuck up the paperwork.

It gets held in Vietnamese customs for almost 4 months. Go down to customs once a week to argue with the guy. One week you can't have it because it looks used. It doesn't look used.

Next week you can't have it because they think I'm importing to resell it. Yes it's a very hot market right now.

Repeat same processes with different people next successive weeks.

Finally someone says to bring prescription. But they don't write prescriptions for CPAPs here. A lot of hand waving when you tell them that. Go back to cardiologist who told me to get the CPAP and ask for a prescription. Oh no, he says, we don't write prescriptions for that. Can you write a letter saying that you don't write prescriptions and that I need the machine? Oh no, he says, I can't do that.

A couple of weeks later finally get someone at customs to agree that my sleep apnea test is proof enough. Bring the test in. Nobody looks at it. They still release the machine to me.

I would still take this random bureaucracy over American insurance any day of the week though.

[EdwardDiego]

I feel like you were expected to pay a gratuity several times in that process and they were baffled you didn't.

[appplication]

My friend does export/import into SEA. You don’t just have to know who/when to bribe, you have to have an insider set up already. They used to have a guy in customs who would take a monthly payment to forward all her packages through without a second look. He disappeared and then trying to find the next one took months. Nothing was getting through customs, and showing up at the office they would deny any attempts to bribe. It is definitely a very coded art finding the right person, price, and parameters to get something set up like that.

[jawngee]

I tried but they wouldn't accept it.

[BossingAround]

"Gratuity" is an amazing euphemism for corruption in a system :))

[samstave]

Who's an expat who knows sliding some cheese? Not this guy.

[coldtea]

>Go down to customs once a week to argue with the guy. One week you can't have it because it looks used. It doesn't look used. Next week you can't have it because they think I'm importing to resell it.

Cousin Eddie: I'm real glad that things are going good for you, Clark.

Clark: Mm-hm.

Cousin Eddie: I got laid off when they closed that asbestos factory.

Clark: Ahem.

Cousin Eddie: And now, wouldn't you know it... ...the Army cut my disability pension... ...because they said the plate in my head wasn't big enough.

Clark: Shoo.

Catherine: Eddie, Clark and Ellen don't want to hear about our troubles.

Clark: No, no. It's very interesting.

Aunt Edna: Why don't you just ask him for the money, Eddie? He sure as hell can't take a hint.

[xrd]

I recently read the book "Gaming Behind the Iron Curtain." It's about the former Soviet satellite states trying to play video games inside the Czech Republicb in the late 80s. They had to smuggle in computers hidden inside suitcases from England. This feels almost like the same thing.

I'm stuck in thinking that someone smart could break apart these CPAP machines and bring in necessary parts, then find other parts from China and hand carry those in. Then reassemble them inside Vietnam. A price differential of $1500 seems like an interesting arbitrage opportunity, maybe better than drug dealing. And there aren't chip sniffing dogs in the airport.

What a nightmare.

[stuaxo]

Sounds like the zx spectrum was almost built perfectly for that.

[methou]

I had a similar experience but in Japan.

My CPAP machine was held by customs, they asked me to provide some extra paperwork from another department, which boiles down to a form and a "prescription". Fortunately they accept american prescriptions. I emailed all of the docs to the department, and they told me since I'm physically in Japan, I have to do what Japanese would do - send a physical mail in an envolope. A week later I got the approval mailed back to me, scanned them and emailed them back to the customs, they released my package.

Then, the shipper messed up with my address, they use a local partner for delivery, but failed to pass them my phone number and the second line in my address. Apparently the poor delivery guy attempted to deliver for a week, I found it out in the tracking page, called the customer service, they figured out and eventually have it delivered.

I thought it was terrible, but now.

[positr0n]

Back in the day I remember reading patio11 posts on navigating the Japanese bureaucracy and he described this as "doing SQL JOINs" across different departments by filling out forms and visiting each one.

[codewench]

Japanese customs is a special thing. I had a plastic Christmas tree held in quarantine for 9 months because the box said "tree", and all attempts to point out that the tree was in fact fake, and probably not of serious biological concern feel on deaf ears.

[forinti]

I don't know Vietnam, but to my South American sensibility, it looks like they were fishing for a bribe.

[lolc]

Fishing is not the phrase I'd used. Insisting on, maybe.

[nimos]

Did you not try to pay some coffee money? Do you have local Vietnamese connections?

Seems like something you could have paid 500-1000k (20-40USD) and been done with.

[jawngee]

Yes they wouldn't accept it.

[petesergeant]

If you need to do this again, fly to Bangkok, they have ResMed and Philips authorised resellers with machines already in country, although incredibly enough you can also just order them off Lazada

[yieldcrv]

lol I felt that last part

I had a business trying to get an institutional trading account, and all these compliance officers kept the application in limbo for a year

finally the exchange’s general counsel or someone maybe even the CFO said I needed to show my company’s AML/KYC policy.

I have my lawyer draft a comprehensive AML/KYC policy.

I told the financial institution that my legal counsel had prepared our "ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING AND “KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER” PROCEDURES Which should fulfill all of your company’s compliance goals”

And apparently that contained the magic words because they approved the account instantly, after being in account creation limbo for an entire year, they never even asked for or looked at the document

[verticalscaler]

It isn't good to argue that way in this part of the world, I hope you didn't raise your voice - not 100% sure about Vietnam but in any of its surrounding countries - they would lose face and become uncooperative.

I learned the hard way after a few experiences like yours to telegraph as little frustration or anger as humanly possible. Reasoning also only goes so far.

But if you appeal on some technicality, even a rule of your own invention..

Carol Beer presents differently across cultures (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pw8m_NTJ_0).

[jevoten]

> Next week you can't have it because they think I'm importing to resell it.

With all the "free trade" agreements Vietnam is party to [1], you'd think this would be perfectly fine. Funny how that works, isn't it?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_agreements_of_Vietn...

[bugbuddy]

Your mistake was not bringing an envelope full of USD as evidence to be submitted to the relevant authority to expedite the service. Guess why it costs over $2k? Additional administrative taxes included. Also, you are supposed to do this through somebody that knows somebody that works somewhere.

[strawberryfie]

I guess random bureaucracy is ok when the treatment in question isn’t urgent.