Thanks Mulki & bawa, I have gotten in touch with FedEx and after being informed of the required stuff, sent in all the paperwork by email and am awaiting a response if anything else is needed. Will let the forum know my experience with the process.
Regards,
Anand
Update as of 29/05/2012
After unsuccessfully trying to reach FedEx by phone yesterday & today to get confirmation of receipt of my documents, I get an email from them asking for "NRAI letter" -- email doesn't specify what letter, I assumed its the membership letter sent along with the card and emailed that. After that, called them and got confirmation of receipt of email(s) said they would"forward the same" to the Customs.
Lets see what happens now.
Update for 30/05/2012
Received a phone call from FedEx asking for ' expiry date' on Life Membership card
and any additional proof of Life Membership. So I sent them copies of my payment receipt and letter that came with the receipt which clearly mentions the payment made was for Life Membership. Again keeping my fingers crossed.
Update for 31/05/2012
Good news, looks like all that paperwork paid off. According to the FedEx tracking site the shipment was cleared today.
Lets see how long it takes to reach me now.
Update for 02/06/2012
Called FedEx several times today to check on package which was cleared on 31/05 but been sitting at the Fedex Delhi office! No response at the Delhi Office where previous communication took place, so called customer care number, and was informed that a "Form 600" was required because the "banned" goods had to be transported by "ground",the guy could not tell me if I was to provide this form, or if there was a delay because this part was being done by FedEx or anything.He did take my contact details and said that some one would call within 24 hours.
Update for 04/06/2012
Yesterday being a Sunday nothing moved, but after speaking to the same lady who helped me clear Customs, I found that the package had been moved to the FedEx Mayapuri Office and she asked me to get in touch with them by giving me their phone number. Unfortunately, I could not hear the last digit of the number after that the call got cut. So I had to try all digits from 0 to 9 and it turned out to be 9
.I had to do this"detective work" because Customer service would not give me the number and repeated attempts at calling back the lady who helped me did not succeed.
Then the Mayapuri office lady gave me the local contact in Hyderabad, Mr Jagdish who is trying to help the matter as I am typing this at 12.40 pm. After explaining to him that Customs had cleared my stuff on 31/05/2012, I was waiting for 4 days and that nothing was moving. The Form 600 is a Way Bill for shipment of goods internally and I sought his help in filling it sending it to the concerned person so that I don't have to wait forever.
Unfortunately, Mr Jagdish insisted that he needs to have the Form 600,upon which I contacted the Maypuri office again and this time I was told that in case of goods for personal use, a declaration to that effect is required and connected me to Mr.S.Kumar and his senior Mr.Naresh Sharma, these guys are the document experts. Mr.Kumar told me pretty much the same thing about the declaration but Mr.Sharma said he would get back to me after checking, so far nothing since 1.30pm. Being pro-active, I tried sending the declaration and other documents by email to both above, but their emails bounced
So after several attempts, I sent it to another guy in the same office whose email id was also given to me by the Mayapuri office people.
Update for 05/06/2012
Got a reply email stating that they received my attachments and that they would try forwarding by "sfc". I am assuming "sfc" means "surface freight cargo".While checking on the status online which now shows as "In Transit" as against "At FedEx location" for the last five days, I called the Mayapuri office to make sure my package had infact left Mayapuri FedEx location and the lady confirmed that it did, and that it may take between 5 and 7 days to reach Hyderabad.
Checked with the website and it shows that the package has reached Gurgaon. So I guess its on its way!
Update for 09/06/2012
Okay guys, finally my package was delivered at about 3.30 pm today
. The shipping carton obviously showed signs of being opened and repacked after Customs inspection. Though the contents did not show any damage, the company packaging(within the shipping carton) was opened with less care than it should have been, and was torn in 4 places
.
My sincere advice to one and all is, if you are importing expensive Air Rifles, please invest in a good Rifle Box made of rugged composite/plastic and has a lot of cushioning inside and make sure that Pyramid Air or other seller packs the rifle in it. If specific instrucions are not given to do that, they may ship both items but not one within the other(which defeates the purpose of buying a box). The pellets were packed well separately, but it looked like the protective glasses in their original "card backed-transparent shrink wrap" (which was torn) were removed and put back.
All in all, my assessment of doing this import was painless upto the point of Customs asking for paperwork. After that, while I provided all documents asked for, time was wasted in further emails and calls, back and forth between FedEx and Customs and FedEx and me for corroborative evidence for my Life Membership with NRAI. But I must say that they cleared it quite fast. Next up, even though they should have contacted me for further paperwork such as asking for the "Form 600/Declaration for personal use", they did not. I had to repeatedly call them, and was not successful in reaching them at all by phone on two days. Then I had to call,the 800 number,the office at Mayapuri and basically given the "run around" for a couple of days. I must say though, that once I could contact them, they tried as best as possible to help me. So the problem areas are:
1.Lack of complete list of required documents for Customs clearance
2. Lack of documents required for shipping within India
3. that of not being able to continuoulsy deal with one person, since they will not give personal numbers.
If any one has any specific questions please ask away!
Regards,
Anand
P.S: I am grateful to all those members who have taken the trouble to post their experiences so that all may benefit. I must say that with the exception of a couple of documents, most things were in place for a smooth import all thanks to this thread.