The Ouk-rra-i-nah Story by Warren Metzler Table of Contents
13. Deceit and mistrust
Igor had agreed to go to Zhitomir at the time the container was packed and shipped; where he would check it was packed correctly, and that the associated paperwork contained all the items I needed to meet US Customs import requirements. I had suggested he do this, and he had agreed, because I had great suspicion the vodka company would not carry out all its responsibilities. I latter realized, as the remaining chapters will reveal, my suspicions had no basis. But at the time they were present. As an example. Every person I talked to in the US, who had experience doing business with a former Soviet Union country, insisted I be very careful.
Further. The factory had a firm policy that all its customers, including me, had to send payment for the entire shipment before that shipment would be prepared; which was, of course, before any shipment would leave the factory. And in my case that purchase price was going to be greater than $30,000.00.
It is very common in international trade to have reimbursement occur via what is called an escrow account. An example: A company in China is willing to sell you a product, and you are located in Los Angeles. The China company sets up a relationship with a company in Los Angeles that handles escrow payments. You deposit the full purchase price with that escrow company, that company notifies the China company, and the China company makes the product and ships it to you. When the shipment arrives in Los Angeles it is assigned to the escrow company and not to you. You are notified the shipment has arrived, and go to inspect the goods. If you agree to accept the shipment, the escrow company releases the payment to the China company and you take possession of the shipment.
I could have contacted a lawyer in Kiev who specialized in international trade, paid him a lot of money and had him contact the branch of the government that had control over the Zhitomir vodka factory. (That factory is actually owned by the Ukrainian government.) Then in time, that lawyer may have been able to convince the government to instruct the vodka factory director to agree to an escrow payment. But I didn't know any such lawyer in Kiev, didn't have extra money to pay such a lawyer, and my impulse was to deal with the company and not to go through a multitude of intermediaries.
Immediately upon realizing Igor would no longer be available to go to the Zhitomir factory, the following series of thoughts appeared.
My life philosophy for many decades was that God -the Supreme Being- existed, that God ran the entire universe in great detail, down to determining how each activity I did (and every human did) turned out. Further, that any limitation which appeared in my life (such as sending $30,000.00 and not receiving vodka in return) was sent by God to show me I needed to find a new approach to some area of my life. Each time I noticed a limitation and then sought a new approach to some area of my life, in the long run I received much benefit; that benefit having a value greater then the cost of the limitation. I could then see that suspicion was definitely a limitation, so I decided to ignore my suspicion and proceed.
But what about communicating with Vlad? There were still unresolved issues with the factory, issues that required dialogue; Vlad spoke Russian and no English, I spoke English and no Russian. Now that Igor was no longer available to communicate with Vlad, how would I resolve those issues?