CONSUMERS : Be Prepared to Meet Customs Officials

Question: I am inquiring as to whether you know of a consumer publication that covers your rights when passing through Customs or border crossings.

I recently returned from a two-week trip to visit my daughter who is an exchange student studying in Spain. Upon clearing Customs I was asked if I had a list of the purchases I had declared valued at $350. I said I didn’t as the form required you to list anything over the $400 allowance.

I was then ordered to go into an inspection area where I spent the next 25 minutes being questioned and my luggage and purse being inspected. No reason was ever offered or substantiated for what I felt was quite rude treatment on the part of the Customs inspector. I was particularly irritated when he went through my purse extracting all the items and even reading papers I had with me.

Since I do not travel out of the country frequently, I tend to forget the procedures and possible problems a person can encounter re-entering our own country. I feel strongly that all airlines should hand out information with the landing cards that would stipulate your rights and responsibilities in clearing Customs.--B.S.

Answer: Customs rules and regulations--and the U.S. Customs Service is the first to admit it--are, indeed, complicated, and the whole thing is further complicated by the fact that the duty on various items tends to fluctuate at pretty frequent intervals.

It’s true, according to Maryanne Noonan, the Custom Service’s public affairs spokesperson in Los Angeles, that you don’t have to enumerate in writing what you have bought and are bringing back with you if it is under the exempted amount. And, while $400 is the exempted amount currently, you can actually bring back up to $1,400 without enumerating it in writing ($400 of it, of course, is exempt, but you can bring back another $1,000, which has a flat 10% duty on it, and it doesn’t have to be written out).

But, Noonan adds--a written list, or not--the law requires you to be able to give the Customs inspector an oral rundown on what you are bringing in. And that, of course, is where you ran afoul and inadvertently subjected yourself to the interrogation and search.

And, yes indeed, Customs inspectors have broad authorization for these searches.

“Her purse,” Noonan says, “is the first logical place for the inspector to look for receipts or for jewelry or other small items that she may have bought.”

But very little is sacred--they can also read dairies, personal correspondence, examine your suitcase with a fine-toothed comb, and probe your dental work. (Well, that’s something of an exaggeration. While it’s possible, physical searches have their own, very detailed, set of rules).

You probably could have spared yourself a lot of frustration if, before returning home, you had read the two pages in your passport, Noonan adds, which give the highlights of the Customs procedure.

Better yet (and this is a good point to remember for your next trip abroad), you could have picked up a copy of the U.S. Customs Service’s booklet, “Know Before Your Go,” at the bureau’s information booth before taking off. The service maintains such booths at most major international airports and, at Los Angeles International Airport, this is on the third floor of the international terminal.

If you want to be really far-sighted, though, anyone planning to go abroad can arm himself/herself well beforehand by writing ahead for this free, 32-page leaflet. Address your request for “Know Before You Go,” Publication No. 512, to: U.S. Customs Service, P.O. Box 7404-Publications, Washington, D.C., 20229.

Q: Your recent column about credit solicitation was interesting, but our problem is the opposite: We cannot seem to get a credit rating. My husband was transferred to Southern California by his company in Australia. When we arrived we bought a car (for cash), applied for Social Security numbers, obtained our California drivers’ licenses, opened our banking accounts and found a house to rent.

Once our photo licenses and Social Security numbers arrived, I naturally started to apply for credit cards only to have them refused. Finally the bank where we have our accounts issued the two cards it is affiliated with, but we got knocked back by major department stores and other credit-card issuers.

The answer in each case was “X Credit Bureau has no information about you, so you have no credit rating.” I know that paying is not a problem and, fortunately, it is much easier to pay by check here than it is in Australia, but I find that I am carrying a lot more cash on me than I would normally consider wise.

My husband does not see why this worries me, but I find it very annoying that in Australia we have a perfect credit rating, but here they will not even go to the trouble of checking our rating with their own card in Australia.

Are the Credit Bureaus here so insular that they do not know that other parts of the world exist?--K.W.M.

A: A part of the problem with across-the-border credit references, according to Jennifer Neu of TRW Information Services’ public affairs office, is that no other country in the world puts a fraction of the emphasis on personal credit that we do in the United States.

Basically, Neu said after researching the subject with local banks and credit grantors--including a couple of banks under foreign ownership--most “credit reporting” bureaus in other parts of the world are, in their development, about “where we were when we got started. That is, they concentrate almost entirely on negative aspects of a person’s credit, not the positive aspects.”

There is still the feeling, in other words, that for a company to submit the names of its good customers to a credit bureau is akin to turning them over to its competitors. And, unfortunately, Australia’s largest credit bureau, Consumer Reference Assn. of Australia Ltd., Neu said, also operates primarily on this negative-aspect reporting technique.

Would it have simplified things for you to have brought with you letters of credit from Australian institutions with which you have done business in the past?

Not really, Neu’s research suggests.

“Even the banks with foreign ownership told me that they would not give any weight to such letters as far as consumer credit is concerned--but that they would as far as granting business loans is concerned.”

Would it have helped if you had financed that new car instead of paying cash for it?

“They might have had trouble doing so,” Neu says, “although some of the dealerships--through their own financing subsidiaries--might do it, but their interest rate would probably be higher in such a case.”

Unfortunately, most of the criteria for granting credit to immigrants hinge on conditions that are beyond the immigrant’s control: length of residency and how long he/she has been on the job. Which sounds very much like the conditions looked at on a native’s credit application.

“The consensus among the banks,” Neu said, “is that the fastest way to establish credit here is to open both a passbook savings account and a checking account with a local bank--which they can do on the strength of their Immigration and Naturalization Service Form I-94. A Social Security number or driver’s license isn’t required.

Most banks indicated that they would then extend credit up to 80% of the balance in the passbook account. There is another force at work here in this matter of credit information exchange in addition to the fact that no country in the world except the United States takes the position that consumer credit is an inalienable right that should be granted as painlessly as possible.

And this other force is historic--an instinct on the part of countries that have been at war with each other in the past, Neu adds, to exchange as little information as possible about their citizens. All of which is of very little comfort to you, I’m afraid. It just requires a lot of patience on your part and the understanding that--if the roles were reversed and an American couple relocated to Australia or Europe--they would probably encounter the same sort of brick wall.

“I lived for awhile in England,” Neu observes, “and I didn’t even try to establish credit because what little need I had of it was taken care of through my American Express, and other credit cards, with international acceptance. If I had tried to buy a car, or something, I’m sure that I would have had big problems.”