We have had the "customs" agents in the Philippines straight up hold our shit hostage until we send a "bag man" to pay the ransom. Have any of you had to deal with this and found a good way around it?
Posted Mar 23, 2022, 5:13 AM UTC
how do you ship equipment?
You don't. You buy it from a local VAR.
Buy local if you can, customs can be a pain to work with. I’ve typically seen Amazon used for those if applicable (most of my dealings with customs was for Australia from the US). Especially if you have a few managers in the region, they typically can hold onto equipment, and give you time for a remote setup if needed.
We buy local whenever possible but we've had trouble getting good firewalls and some other hardware. We're getting quotes of like 3 months out. I happen to have some extra hardware from a site that went permanently WFH I'd like to ship over there but the last time we shipped firewalls, customs held them for 9 months while asking for the same paperwork over and over. It's even more annoying that they just play games. It would be nice if they could just slap a corruption tag on the box with the bribe amount we need to give them.
For Philippines, use a forwarder. I can recommend LBC shipping cart.
Buy local... then Intune / autopilot.....
eh, we have the same here in Australia - only they're government sanctioned and called "Customs Officials". same shake-down deal, though