how to purchase a car online

I try to (loosely) stick to my rule about not writing stories specifically about my life, but I thought this story was pretty funny and also a tale of life in Dar.

The title of this past was going to be “how to purchase a car online from another continent and pray that it doesn’t fall off the ship on its way to Dar”, but I thought that would be too cumbersome. And it would give too much of this post away.

So the first option for buying a car is to buy one here in Dar (see previous post). The second option is to have a car imported. Cars drive on the left hand side of the road here (right-side driver) so there are a limited number of places from which one can import a car. Japan is the most common option. The process is to view cars on a website (e.g. http://www.japanesevehicles.com/tcl/en/stockList?region=Japan&type=8). You then email the company and tell them you’re interested in such-and-such vehicle and they quote you a higher price that includes freight and processing charges. You then have 48 hours to send them the entire sum of money, otherwise you loose your hold on the car. In my case, I sent them the entire sum of money in 48 hours and then received a polite email telling me that my car had already been sold.

Needless to say, that was not a happy moment. Not a happy moment at all. After a week of haggling, I found a new car that will henceforth be referred to as “my baby”. Now, keep in mind that all this occurred in March and that I had, in essence, purchased a car that I had never seen, never driven and had no information on past the type, year, color, transmission and engine specs. I had paid a rather substantial sum of money to own a car, in Japan. You get no paperwork, only an emailed version of the invoice saying that you own a car. Everyone assured me that was “how it was done”, but really, it was not the most reassuring feeling.

Then the waiting begins for a spot on a ship. So for two months my baby sat in Japan while I sat here. Then finally, you get a shipment date. The car is put on a ship and then, (finally!!), then you are sent the bill of sale and the paperwork saying that you actually own a car. My mean, evil roommate (jokingly) pointed out that with my luck, my baby would fall off the ship and I would never actually get to claim her. Luckily his prediction did not come to pass.

But the battle is not over yet- once a car reaches Dar it has to be maneuvered through the bureaucracy of the import paperwork and import duties. And it needs to do this fast enough so that parts don’t start to “fall off” the car. Luckily, none of my parts succumbed to the incredibly strong pull of gravity (helped along of course by screwdrivers and fingers). (Though I’m told that even if parts do fall off, there is usually little structural damage to the car since if the guy with all the keys gets a cut, there is no need to break windows.) I of course do not possess the requisite skills (aka the knowledge of who to bribe and how much to bribe) to speed the paperwork through the process, but I did have the brains to hire a skilled individual to do that for me.

So nearly 3 months to the day from when I paid for my baby I allowed to see her and drive her home. I’m still waiting on plates and the registration, but those should come any day now. And luckily, hopefully (since only time will tell) my baby is not a leemon.