In June 2002 we bought a 2 year old Peugeot 406 Estate. We had been told that cars keep their value in Hungary and that a car of that age would cost about 75% of its original price so we thought it was economical sense to purchase one in England. Also, because we bought the car for well below market price, it was worth taking, especially as we could take it into the country without paying import duty on it. Ferenc said when we got to Hungary he would convert it so that the steering wheel would be on the correct side.
We were very pleased with our car deal, but, as you will find out if you read on, we did not take into account that Hungarian officials will not volunteer information. It is a case of ‘if you don’t ask you don’t get the information you need, but, if you don’t know you need the information then how do you know you have to ask….’. Well, you get my drift.
Over the last 5 years we have asked the Hungarian Embassy, in London, for vast amounts of information so our move to Hungary could be done as smoothly and as economically as possible. We asked about taking in vehicles and had been told that a citizen may take in a private car and a commercial vehicle on relocating to the country. As some of the information had been given in 1998 I checked with the London Embassy, in 2002, if the information was still valid and they confirmed that it was correct.
If you are a Hungarian citizen, have been living abroad for more than 2 years then you can apply to the Hungarian Embassy, in the country you have been residing, to issue you with a certificate called Hatósági Bizonyítvány. The certificate allows you to take into Hungary your personal possessions, household items and your vehicles without paying customs duty.
Because he was returning to Hungary after 47 years in England, Ferenc, being a Hungarian citizen, applied for a Hatósági Bizonyítvány in October, 2002. After he submitted the application forms an official from the Embassy phoned him and asked what date he was relocating to Hungary.
Ferenc told him that he was going to Hungary in November 2002, but only to take in some personal possessions. He was returning to England in December and was not relocating until the spring of 2003.
The official told him that he had to put a date on the certificate so Ferenc said his first journey was going to be on November 11th 2002 so that was the date that was put on the certificate.
But, by giving the official that date, he had no idea what it would eventually mean and what the implications would be.
On 1st May 2003 we made our second journey to Hungary with some more of our possessions. We bought them in a van which we intended to keep with us in Hungary. My son had driven the car in, as a tourist, and we planned to register the vehicles officially once the VAM (customs) had finished checking in our possessions – it was enough to do one thing at a time without complicating it with vehicle details.
When he had finished the paperwork for our possessions we asked the VAM officer how to go about registering the car and the van. He said we could only bring in the car duty free and would have to pay duty on the van.
He would not listen to the fact that we had been told we could bring in the van as well and had confirmation of the fact from the Embassy in London. But, as we discovered later, he did us a favour by refusing to accept it.
We said, OK, we would just bring the car in. The officer said he would keep the Hatósági Bizonyítvány certificate in our file and we could go straight to him when we wanted to register it and he would do the paperwork for us.
We had been told that the vehicle would have to go through a MOT test before it was registered. To make sure the car was in tip top condition and in case the Hungarian MOT test required something different to the English one, we thought it was a good idea to have a service done in the Peugeot Garage in Érd. They did the service and cleaned the car beautifully (38,000 forint, please) but they told us that it was falling to bits and needed some 120,000 forint worth of work doing on it. We politely refused their offer to do it for us. After Ferenc checked out the parts they said were faulty, he realised they were just trying to get money out of stupid foreigners – when Ferenc speaks Hungarian he must have an English accent!
Having satisfied ourselves the car was in perfect working order we started the process of registering the car officially. Little did we know it would be the beginning of over 20 visits to various offices, endless hours of waiting and a bill of over 1,000,000 forint.
This is the diary of events and places we visited over the next month:-
1. Friday 30th MAY 2003
We took the car, as we had been instructed, straight to the VAM (customs) office in Székesfehérvar. The VAM officer asked for the documents we had got at the border. What documents? He had told us to go straight to Székesfehérvar, he had even kept our certificate. If we needed documents from the border they would have needed to see the certificate. Yes, that was correct, but he needed the papers from the border – confused already?
2. Tuesday 3rd June 2003
OK, so out to Austria we went down the M1 (10 day toll ticket, 1,900 forint, please), did a “U” turn and came back across the border. Over the next couple of hours we filled in forms, which of course, we would have to pay for and we were issued with an insurance certificate, valid for 1 month (22,000 forint, please)
We were told we could not drive on English number plates any more but had to have temporary Hungarian ones (6,000 forint, please). We asked if we could drive the car as we usually would, while it was being dealt with by the VAM, and we were told that we could just drive it as normal.
We drove back along the MI and after we had been clocked, by a motorway patrol on video, we realised that although we had purchased a toll ticket in the morning we now had different number plates – wonder how we will explain that one.
3. Thursday 5th June 2003 – morning
We went to Székesfehérvar again. We arrived at 7.45am and after about an hour Ferenc was called into the office and was told he could not bring the car in free of duty as he had not owned it for over 6 months. Yes, he had, he had owned it for 10 months when we relocated to the country on 1st May and he had bought it into the country officially 2 days ago so it had been in his possession now for 11 months. Sorry, it had only been in your possession for 5 ½ months on 11th November 2002 which is the date on the Hatósági Bizonyítvány certificate. Go to Budapest where they will process the vehicle for you and you can pay the customs duty. We were devastated; it seems all our careful planning had been for nothing.
4. Thursday 5th June 2003 – later in the morning
It was still early in the morning so we headed for Gergely ut, in Budapest, the main VAM office. We filled in more forms and spent another couple of hours there. We were told to take the car into a garage, under the building, to be inspected. With great difficulty we managed to manoeuvre into the garage and we waited out turn thinking it was going to be given a MOT test. But, all that happened was that a VAM officer checked the chassis number to see if it was the same as the number in the log book; he couldn’t find the engine number so he must have assumed there was not one. We were sent up to the office again and eventually we were told that we would have to go to the other side of the city to the main VAM testing station to see if our car was fit to be entered into the Hungarian traffic system. We were told we had 2 days to do it and report back to them. As it was Thursday and we had another appointment on the Friday morning we managed to negotiate a return to them on the following Monday. By that time we had accumulated quite a file of papers we had to carry with us and our details had been entered onto their computer system.
Over the weekend we discovered it was a Bank holiday on the Monday so we couldn’t go to the VAM office so we had 3 free days.
5.Tuesday 10th June 2003 – morning
We started out at 7am for Mozaik utca which is on the Pest side of the Danube on the way to Szentendre. It took us quite a time to find it as it was tucked away in a street underneath a flyover. More papers to fill and line up outside the work shop for the car to be looked at. The front and back wheel joints were shaken violently and the chassis number was checked once again but they still could not find the engine number.
(21,000 forint, please). Nobody seemed to want to say if it was OK to go into the system but seeing as we paid the money and we were told to go back to the office in Gergely utca, we assumed it has passed.
6. Tuesday 10th June 2003 – afternoon
We headed back across the city and arrived at Gergely utca around lunch time. We were directed to a desk where we had more forms to fill out (2,800 forint, please), then sent to an officer who made out our bill. After 2 hours, and after sending it back to be corrected a couple of times, we were presented with the bill (937,485 forint, please). We were told we had to pay it at the OTP bank just down the road from their office and it must be paid within 2 days.
We were tired and hungry by then so we decided to go home and get over the shock.
We rebelled and took Wednesday off as we were sick of sitting in offices and paying out money by then.
7. Thursday 12th June 2003 – morning
We set off again but we waited until after 9am this time as we were not anxious to part with our money. We went to the designated branch of the OTP bank and paid the bill.
8. Thursday 12th June 2003 – morning
We went back to the Gergely utca office to show the bank receipt to prove we had paid it. They stamped it and told us to go back to Mosaik utca to make an appointment for a MOT test.
9. Friday 13th June 2000
Good job we are not superstitious or we may have been waiting all day for something bad to happen but I doubt if it could have got any worse.
We went to Mosaik utca to book the MOT. We had to wait ages and when we finally got to the booking clerk she couldn’t find us on the computer system so there was another long delay while our particulars were traced. Finally we were told to be at the work shop around 6am on Monday morning.
10. Monday 16th June 2003 – early morning
At 6.30am we arrived at Mosaik utca for the MOT test and, of course, had more forms to complete. (6,875 forint, please). Yes, it had passed – go to your Council offices to put the car into the traffic system.
11. Monday 16th June 2003 – later that morning
Next we went to the local council offices, in the town where we live, to enquire what the next step was – we were told to go to the official local garage
12. Monday 16th June 2003 – later still that morning
The official garage was the Honda garage in the town. We made an appointment with them for 9am the next day.
13. Tuesday 17th June 2003
At 9am we left the car at the garage. The official garage’s duty, apparently, was to put the car into the system; check if it wasn’t stolen and if it was “authentic” – in other words if the numbers on the car matched the ones in the log book and at 4 pm they phoned to say it was ready (19,825 forint, please). Well, after all, they did discover that the car engine had a number. Go to the Council offices next, they said, but come back when we know what the new car registration number is so it can be put on the insurance cover note. The insurance company will send you a bill for the insurance and a policy in about a month.
14.Wednesday, 18th June 2003 – morning
We were at the Council Offices by 8am next morning. After waiting for around an hour we were called into an office and the clerk proceeded to fill in more forms, we also filled in forms and to make the paperwork official we had to put stamps on them
(8,000 forint, please) which, luckily, were available from the reception desk in the council offices. These forms were apparently to give them information about the make size, weight and engine size – and if it has a tow bar or not - so that a bill for “weight tax” could be issued for payment twice a year.
15.Wednesday, 18th June 2003 – morning
We were sent to the post office next.
The number plate had to be paid for (4,538 forint, please) and the forms had to be paid for (8,750 forint, please) and we were not sure what the (400 forint, please) was for but we had ceased to care by then. We had been given bills for these and we paid at the post office.
16.Wednesday, 18th June 2003 – morning
We took the receipts back to the council offices to prove they had been paid; we were given the new number plates and were told that the log book for the car would be sent in about 6 weeks. It was lunch time by then.
17.Wednesday, 18th June 2003 - afternoon
Then, guess what, we had not finished, after lunch it was back to the garage for a “Green omissions test” (6,000 forint, please)
18. Thursday 19th June 2003
Mosaik utca today. Oh! I forgot to mention that the clerk in the Council offices discovered that the clerk at Mosaik utca had completed the forms incorrectly so after a frantic exchange of phone calls we were told to go back there and get new forms and while we were there we could have the section, where it asked for Engine number, filled in.
19. Friday 20th June 2003
We took the corrected papers back to the Council offices where they were duly stamped and filed away.
20.Wednesday 25th June 2003
We had to go to the Council offices to pay the water bill and when we got to the reception desk the clerk said that she had some forms for Ferenc to complete. The “weight tax” has to be paid twice a year and because my husband did not have a tax number they couldn’t possibly charge us with out it so he had to fill the forms in, send them off to the tax office and he was duly allocated a number on a plastic card.
21.Being used to western companies being on the ball concerning insurance details (you know, you pick up the phone and tell them what you want and they deal with it) last week Ferenc suddenly realised that we had not received a bill from the insurance company. We went to the “official Council garage” that was dealing with it and after frantic searching they discovered they had overlooked it and we had been driving for over 2 weeks without insurance. We must take note that everything has to be chased up and nothing left to others
22.After a week the insurance certificate arrived with the bill (7,537 forint, please) which was very good for 3 months insurance but it is only third party. In Hungary it is the vehicle that is insured not the drivers so it can be driven by anyone you give authority to. A fully comprehensive insurance has to be taken separately and will cost a lot of money, around the ½ million forint per year mark for a medium sized family car with the owner paying around the first 200,000 forint of any claim.
23.Weight tax bill duly arrived (5,600 forint, please).
24. On 30th August another letter arrived from the Council offices. Apparently they had to check the car out again before they could issue a log book – perhaps with the Transport Department in England, it does not say- apparently everything is as it should be but they require another fee for doing it (4,000 forint, please). We were under the impression we had paid several times for these checks to be made. It seems that each department has to make its own investigations as information is not shared and the customer pays.
25. The log book finally arrived. A small piece of paper was left in our mail box informing Ferenc that he must collect the log book from the post office within 24 hours or it would be returned to the Department of Transport. He had to produce his identity card and sign for it but surprisingly they did not ask for a fee.
Another thing happened that was quite disturbing. Again, it was down to officials not giving correct information and could have had dire consequences for us. On Sunday 15th June we thought we deserved a day out so we decided to visit friends in Siofok. I was driving the car and as we passed through a village we were stopped by a police patrol car. I knew I was not speeding so I was baffled as to what they wanted. They asked to see our papers and I handed them the file I had been told to carry with us until the car registration had been sorted out. They sorted through the papers and said did my husband know that on temporary number plates he was not allowed to carry any passengers, carry anything in the car or tow a trailer and other people were certainly not allowed to drive the car?
They would have to take our number plates off as we had been breaking the law. Ferenc said go ahead, we had the English ones in the boot and as insurance was still in order we could legally drive it.
By the way, what should we tell the traffic inspectors when we had to report to their office on Monday morning for a vehicle inspection? They did not know what to say to that and fortunately they saw a lorry passing that was not supposed to be on the road on a Sunday so they got back in their car and took off after that. They were furious when the drove away so we suspect the poor lorry driver did not get off so lightly
It turned out that when we bought the car over the border they had told us not use our legal English plates and legal English Insurance and had given us papers that made using the car illegal. The rules were printed on the back of a small piece of paper that we thought was a receipt for money paid. By their rules, if you start the process of importing the car at the border all the luggage should be taken out of the car and left at the border and of course the passengers left there as well.
The paperwork was obviously intended for commercial importation of vehicles not a family bringing a car into the country on relocation. So much for being told at the border that we could use the car as we normally would.
As you can imagine after a month of going from office to office, waiting for hours and hours and paying out all that money we were fed up, exhausted and broke.
IF we had been told that the "6 months" rule applied to the date that was put on the certificate and not the date we relocated, we could have postponed our first trip until after the car had been in our possession for 6 months - just 2 more weeks.
IF we had known what we had to go through and how much it was going to cost we would most likely not have bought a car in with us but would have purchased one here in Hungary. But, by the time we realised what they were doing we could not afford to return to England as we had sold our home there and left the country. To return to England with the car would have cost more than the amount of money they were asking for in duty.
Points worth taking note of though, although we paid out a lot of money for the vehicle not all of it was customs duty. Just 171,611 forint + 25% VAT. The other fees would have had to be paid if we had been allowed to bring it in duty free. It was the price of getting it registered here and into the system. Something else we were misled about. Also it would have taken nearly the same time and visits to the same offices to do it.
It all seemed so simple when we read we could take our car into the country duty free. We were led to believe that it would be just like taking in our tables and chairs – they would look at it, stamp a piece of paper, give us some number plates and off we would go. How stupid we were to think that it would be so simple.
The van, well we decide it was not worth keeping in Hungary as we had only had it for 3 weeks before the certificate was issued so we certainly would have had to pay duty on it. My son took it back to England and sold it for us and we are going to buy a van here if we need one.
The only good thing that came out of all this is that we still came off better, financially. Including all the money we paid out to the various offices we saved well over £3,000 on the price of buying a similar car in Hungary but that fact is little compensation for the stress the whole process caused.
