m0ei
I have a friend of mine coming from USA on Monday. I bought a new laptop and it's available with my uncle, and he is going to give it to my friend to ship it with him in his bags.
He has a laptop that he is carrying in his hand bag. I asked him to bring the laptop with him but he's telling me that it will cause him problems in Lebanon if he bought 2 laptops with him. He will then have to pay some customs for that laptop, he's not sure though. I told him to put his laptop in the hand bag and mine in the other and if they asked him about it, tell them that it's my new laptop I bought.
So anyone faced such an issue before at the Airport ? I'm not up to pay any customs/fees for a laptop that cost me quite much. Any help ?
Nabs
He could take your new laptop out of its box, but it in a laptop back, and the whole thing in a mail package and label it "m0ei's laptop", tell the people at the airport that it's your laptop that you forgot when you were in USA. If it's already yours and used, it's free to clear.
m0ei
If it's just removed from the box? Can't he tell them this laptop.is for work and the one in my hand is for daily use ? or something like that. I didn't get you, will they check if it's used ? And what about the box thing, He removes the laptop from the box and then put it back in and then wrap the box in a mail package with a label to me ? If they ask him, he can tell them it's for person "X" with the same as a on the label ?
I don'r wanna cause him any issues as I don't know the guy well.
nuclearcat
Sometimes i am travelling with 2-3 laptops. But sure they are all out of the box.
Never had questions. But i am foreigner :)
rtp
you can get like 1 ton of mariwana and nobody will tell you anything, its that bad.
when i was coming from bulgaria back to lebanon , there was no security check, actually there was but there was a queue to wait. so i thought i just kept on walking until further notice and nobody told me sir please get your bag checked. Beirut aiport is a joke and police who find illegal drug smuglers are people dump enough to be smoking or injecting themselves with the drug in front of a non sleeping officer.
so from my experience you can get a bag full of dynamits and nobody will say anything.
nuclearcat
rtp, you are wrong. They check, but they work professionally.
Usually they don't give a shit about 2 laptops and such stuff, they will do problem only if they are in bad mood or you have critical stuff.
There was one person was travelling with me, with full bag of chinese fake rolex and vertu. It was hand luggage and they knew he have it :)
Another example theyknow some way about girl that had 1/4 of extasy pill (drug) inside clothes layers, it fell through a small hole in pocket (it is not someone put, her mistake, and even she didn't knew it fell inside clothes). They catch only her(it was group of kabaret girls), they knew she have somewhere drugs, and searched till they found it.
Don't underestimate your customs :)
rtp
i stated my experience , as my last sentence goes.
not even close to professional. my experience....
samer
I came back from Europe a couple of days ago around 1:00 AM. I was the first to go through customs (the airport was more or less empty). I only had hand luggage. The guy looked at me awkwardly and asked me to put it through the xray machine. He made some small talk while the bag went through (and didn't even look at the screen) and then let me through.
Joe
Checking the luggage of every person coming out of the plane is impractical, a pain in the ass of everyone and redundant (since the passenger has probably been searched in the other airport before getting on the plane).
I've never been to an airport where customs check every suitcase and bag, and the Beirut one is no different. They proceed via "random" checks. How do they pick the people to check I don't know, I guess they must have some directives and I bet each officer behaves differently (since they must act on intuition a lot).
About the laptop, there's very little chance your friend will get into trouble for it, but to be on the safe side, it wouldn't hurt if he took the new laptop out of the box and carried it in his suitcase. Customs are looking for criminals and people who'd smuggle dozens of illegal laptops. Having a young man travelling with 2 laptops is really not that suspicious.
jsaade
He might get in trouble in the US but certainly not lebanon.
I brought once: 1 wii, 3 iphones, 2 laptops all in their original boxes.
They asked me in the US i told them they are cheaper and not available.
In lebanon nobody bothered asking
KarimCfc
Thanks for the info guys, my aunt is going to the US in a month and I was going to ask her to bring 3 iPhone 4S with her (for the family), I was wondering if it'll land her in trouble with the customs..
ahk40a
Guys,
The late PM Rafik Hariri, and on the first session of his new government in the year 2000, made a change on the customs by removing all the fees on all electronics and all types of computers related to education and improving the Lebanese people.
My cousin always bring a bag full of laptops as a gift for his relatives, he never puts them in their carton box for dimension reason.
Gdluck
yasamoka
@ahk40a: I order packages via Aramex. Packages that are labelled "Electronics" get Customs, while packages that are labelled "Computer Accessories" do not get Customs.
Packages which have had purely computer hardware and have been identified as such by Aramex are the ones that are usually labelled Computer Accessories. I have also found that for packages with a high item count, even if the packages had most items as computer hardware, they may be labelled as "Electronics. I'm guessing this is due to the increasing chance that one of the items is not identified as a computer accessory.
However, this is talking about express shipments.
As you said, goods that are in a bag with a passenger should not pose a problem.
