My dear friend in Australia sent me a present. It arrived. A week later I got a letter in the mail saying I have to now pay tax on the present because it was worth more than 100 chf.
My dear friend in Australia (the same one) had a birthday the other week and I sent her a present. Today it didn't arrive (3 weeks after I posted it!) but its packaging did, and a nice letter from the quarantine people saying that the present has been detained because it contains "plant items of unknown origin"* and that she can either pay for them to gamma irradiate it then send it on to her, pay for them to post it back to me (funnily enough the postage costs exactly the same as the gamma irradiation, and also about twice as much as the postage from here), or they will kindly destroy it for her (I'm not sure if there's a price tag on that).
The unrelenting joy of getting a present: 0. Rage-inducing bureaucracy: 2.
* Actually of dried yellow pea origin. Given my many encounters with customs in Australia (not that I smuggle stuff in, just that it always makes me idiotically nervous when I arrive in Australia and have to wrack my brains about when my shoes may have last encountered rural dirt, or whether I have anything wooden in my bag. And I dread the day when they decide to open my suitcase and rootle through it to check I'm not hiding any eggs or iguanas or anything in it. Plus I've seen that TV show about customs people at the airport, where they reduce innocent-looking international students to tears for failing to declare the $20 000 in cash and the 18 bags of dried chicken gizzards they are bringing into the country.) you'd think I would have anticipated this and would have left the peas out or replaced them with non-plant matter. But no, apparently not.
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4 comments:
that stinks. that's total bs.
Laughed my socks off! I always have the same experience when arriving at customs in Australia. I think I declared decongestant tablets last time, just in case.
Sucks about the postage - this is a common complaint from my parents: the postage of packages to Zürich usually costs more that the contents!
It sucks big time. Grr.
I had ALL my shoes washed by customs or some other airport official when I landed in Sydney. And my skates. And they looked long and hard at the potent vitamins I brought. And my prescription medicine, even though I showed them my presciption. Most impressive.
But yes - customs and mail is a bitch. Stops me from buying lots of things outside europe, because you get taxed and VAT'ed not only from the items you purchase, but on the shipping costs as well. It's SO ridiculous...
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