Tale of an Odyssey

Whoever has said moving is easy has never truly moved. They’ve not lost boxes in a move. They’ve not had furniture damaged in a move. They’ve not had to learn how to cook or shop in a new place. They’ve not been frustrated by language barriers that hinder progress. They have not had to try to attain new resident status or identification. They have not had to establish themselves in a new health care system. They’ve not had to transition children between schools. Moving is exciting and thrilling, and filled with wonderfully irreplaceable opportunities. Easy - it is not.

As we sorted through boxes and unpacked we discovered that a box “fell off the truck” somewhere between here and Saudi containing and Euro pillow and King pillow that goes with our bedding ensemble. Erin has superbly rearranged the bedding to make it balanced and somewhat symmetric (she knows her mom all too well), but deep down I still know the set is incomplete and I’m frustrated.

In Jeddah as the packers were packing up our things, Dano decided it would be better to send our desktop computer and hard drive via FedEx to arrive at the offices here in The Netherlands within two weeks and not sit in a shipping container for a couple months with risk of being damaged. It never arrived and has fallen into FedEx’s black hole of untraceable boxes. Our entire family is disappointed by this (well, Emily doesn’t seem too bothered) as we occasionally recall things that were on that computer. FedEx doesn’t seem to think it’s their responsibility and is not willing to replace the computer at its full value. Where’s the accountability in that? I really want to tell them, “Then don’t replace it. Simply find it!” We have not ruled out a quick trip to Paris to scavenge their warehouse (the last known whereabouts) to find it ourselves.

Our printer, purchased in Saudi, moved to Holland, loaded with ink cartridges purchased here, won’t work. As it turns out, HP printers are regional specific regarding their ink cartridges. We have to have someone reformat our printer to accept ink cartridges anywhere outside of Saudi Arabia. As Dano says, HP is a global company. Then act like a global company and make your products consumer-friendly for your global customers.

Then there’s our beautiful Odyssey. This was not meant to be a post about a Greek war or tribute to Homer. This is about a Honda purchased February 7th in Ohio. I saw it for the first time in person when I was back in March. The car salesman had delivered it to our home and parked it in our garage. We knew we wanted to pay the extra money to ship a car rather than buy a ridiculously expensive one here that would fit our brood. Dano looked into all the requirements for importing a vehicle. One of them was you must own the vehicle for six months. This was no problem as we’d paid for it in full on February 7th and would be moving to The Netherlands the beginning of August. It would be close but we should be fine. Dano arranged for the shipping and we shipped it from Seattle in July while we were visiting my parents.

We obtained our residence status here in The Netherlands on August 12th, still six months after purchasing our van (and five days). Our van arrived the first week of September. Yea! We were ready and anxious. Then Dano received word that it did not meet the import regulations and we’d be charged the import duty taxes. The Dutch consider ownership to take place once you have registration. In the US, we consider ownership to take place once monetary transaction has been exchanged. For us, that would be February 7th. In the US, title and registration aren’t always immediate. Ours apparently were completed on February 22nd…not six months before our Dutch residency. Therein lies our problem. They’re contending we didn’t own it for six months before importing it (though it didn’t even arrive until September). The penalty: import taxes of 40% of the cost of the vehicle.

Dano and I discussed the worst-case scenario: They deny our petition and we have to pay around $16000 to get our van! That thought was really hard for me to swallow. Then another statement came informing Dano the taxes would be based on the value of the vehicle here, not what we paid. In other words, the value of a Honda Odyssey here is around $115,000 making our taxes due amount to $46,000 to collect our van...double what we paid. I was just upset when he told me this. What kind of skewed system were we working with who wasn’t understanding our situation and being so petty about dates? Clearly on paper, we owned the car six months prior to moving here!

Dano and I have discussed our next worst-case scenarios. They make me too sad and frustrated right now to write. (None of which include any of our children missing a portion of college.)

There are some days when it makes me feel badly for our nearly-new, quite-loved van sitting in a warehouse all alone waiting to be claimed. I know it’s just an inanimate object but somehow, cars become part of our family. I don’t know if anyone else ever feels this way. Sometimes I am certain I hear it calling out to me from far away in Rotterdam….Melissa….Melissa…come and get me!

Hopefully there will be an addendum in the next week or two with a happy ending. Who ever said moving was easy?