The last leg of our shipping process involved 5 steps.
Step 1:
We had to decide when we wanted Dolphin to ship our stuff. As I mentioned before, Dolphin uses Zim and Zim has so many boats going out each week that depending on what day we picked, Dolphin would know exactly what day it would land in Israel. Still, we were wary of unexpected delays and the last thing we wanted was for our shipment to not be there when we got there. On the other hand, we still didn't have a flight date yet, and we also didn't want the shipment sitting in the port for more than 30 days, since they would start charging us.
We decided to wait one week, and instead of shipping it out the week of Aug 22, we shipped it the week of Aug 29. It ended up arriving on Sep 19, exactly when they said it would.
Step 2:
We had to fill out some paperwork to get our shipment through the Israeli port. Dolphin gave me a few forms to fill out. They were all in Hebrew, and at first I was a little nervous about filling them out correctly. But when I called someone told me just to sign next to the arrows and they would fill in the rest.
After that, I was only in contact with a woman who works for Lidor (Dolphin's Israeli arm). I emailed her a scanned picture of my passport, and a scanned copy of the lease I'd signed on our apartment in Israel. That was it.
When Sep 19 passed, we were informed that our shipment had arrived in the port. At this point, something occurred to us: we knew that as new Olim we were exempt from custom tax. But we hadn't sent anyone any proof that we were new Olim. We were worried that we might have to send someone from Israel down to the port, or else be charged customs taxes that we knew we'd never get back.
Thankfully, though, that never happened. Instead, we just got a bill for the port fees, with the customs section blank.
Step 3:
We had to wire the money to Lidor to get our stuff through. We first tried doing this at Bank of America in Philly, but it didn't work. Lidor had given us the standard bank identification information - bank number, branch number, account number - but not enough for an international wire (you'd think that, being an international shipping company, they would have enough experience not to make this blunder...).
Instead, we had Rachel's sister wire the money to Lidor, and we essentially paid her back. This worked out fine for us, but it would have been annoying if we didn't have someone in Israel to do that for us.
Step 4
Once the money was wired, all that was left was to schedule the delivery. By this point we knew we were landing at 6:30 AM Monday, and so we asked the woman from Lidor if we could have a delivery Monday as late as possible. She said the latest she could do was around 1:30 on Monday. We knew that in theory we'd have plenty of time, but we didn't know how long the aliyah processing in the airport would take.
The final arrangement was that I would call the Lidor woman on Monday morning from the airport. If we were running late, she would cancel the Monday afternoon delivery and push if off till Tuesday. If we were on time, the Monday delivery was on.
This plan did not work. Even though our aliyah experience was smooth as silk, for some reason Lidor was not able to make the delivery happen on Monday. We slept on some borrowed mattresses, and awaited delivery on Tuesday.
Step 5
The delivery guys introduced themselves Tuesday afternoon by shouting up at my window. I went down and told them they were at the right place. To my surprise they parked their (very large) truck directly in front of the bus stop that lies just outside our front door. When I pointed this out to them, the responded with annoyed expressions and gestures; they asked me if I had a better idea of where to park the truck. I let it go, and the unpacking began. It was all going great, until they got to the sofa.
One of the guys walked up to our apartment's doorway and made a mental measurement. "The sofa won't fit" he concluded. I disagreed, and told him so. He started lecturing me about his 20 years of experience in the matter, but luckily the other two guys decided to bringing the sofa up anyway. However, it truly would not fit through.
As the guys brought in the rest of our stuff, they gave me a single option: the sofa could be brought in through the window, but it would be expensive. He seemed to be implying that he would need to get a crane or something. I asked how much, and he said he wasn't sure, but it would be 800-900 shekel.
We considered our options, but we didn't have many. We could leave the sofa on the ground, albeit wrapped up in plastic, but then what? It would have to be taken apart to fit through, and we didn't want that.
Eventually the main mover offered me a deal. He knew that we were going to tip them, so he said for 1000 shekel, they would cover tips for everyone and the hoisting of the sofa. At this point it seemed like the crane was no longer an option; I'm guessing he couldn't get it. But they could still hoist it up with ropes.
The price was obviously totally made up, and we recognized a negotiation situation. But I was tired and not confident in my Hebrew. Plus, we had about zero leverage in this situation. The sofa was on the ground and they were the only ones who could get it in. I offered him a few hundred less, and they laughed in our faces. They actually started setting up the ropes before we finally caved and said ok, just hoist the thing up.
With some flair and some drama, they hoisted up the sofa. we coughed up the cash, and they went home. We were a little shaken by the unexpected expenditure, but then sank happily into our hard-earned couch.
We were done.
