I’m Sorry, Tiffany/Ugg/Victoria’s Secret, It Just Won’t Work Between Us

How often have I seen something inexplicably amazing in an on-line shop that costs a half of what it does in a Moscow retail outlet, selected it and clicked: “Order”, only to find that, while they deliver these fantastic woolly shoes/bracelet/polar bear claw/etc. even to Honduras (whatever for), Russia is, once again, NOT on the list.

            This is so annoying that I can’t even rant about it properly. But that doesn’t mean I won’t make the effort. I’m not going to go into detail on the workings of the Russian post and all the ridiculous rules and regulations that make it that much more difficult for foreign shop-owners to cooperate with us.

            But I am going to say that

this is outrageous. It’s like the iron curtain never fell. We have to wait up to 6 months for a simple postcard, and God forbid anyone tries to order anything on Ebay – expect your delivery in a year or two. I may be exaggerating a little, but if you ever tried to deal with our post, you get what I mean.

            And there’s the service in the post-offices to talk about. In one of the previous posts in this blog I wrote about the Scary Lady Syndrome. Remember: the women who work in the offices of Pochta Rossii (the federate mail service) are, each of them, the queen bees of all the scary ladies.

They are mean, bitter and always SO ANGRY at you, their job, the whole world and everything that’s in it. Don’t look them in the eye, speak clearly, or, rather, don’t speak at all, just fill out your paperwork correctly (no-one cares that there’s not a single example of how to do that on the web or in the office – that’s your problem) and give it to them without making any sudden movements. Then, and only then, may you come out of there with your head still resting on your shoulders. And, if you’ve been blessed by Zeus and Odin, with your letter/package in your hands.

Using other delivery services helps, if only a little – they have decent employees who smile at you and speak in soft, polite voices. But THEY have to deal with the federal post instead of you, and that explains why they charge you that s-load of money for their services. And, again, due to their working through the federal post system, things still don’t get delivered any faster.

 

I have no solution for the problem, and this isn’t a motivational post, just a straight-up rant, it’s just here to let out the AAAAARGH I feel when desperately wanting to buy something that costs 2 times less in Europe, US, Asia – basically, all over the world - but not being able to do that because of the idiotic import policy of my country. If you’re with me, share and rant on, may be, someday, it’ll somehow force this situation to change.