Ouch! Bloody Customs
21 06 2006After years of buying stuff from all over the world, including many high value goods that I was able to make a huge saving on, I today got stung by customs for the first time, on a relatively low value purchase. I bought myself a new pair of Rollerblades from the US last week, and today, got landed with a EUR 45 bill on a pair of US$ 150 skates, which I really hadn’t been expecting. Now, how they calculated the bill, and what they base their figures is beyond me. Anyone got any ideas?
Still, managed to save EUR 100 over what it would have cost me here in Ireland, even with customs and postage factored in!
Customs guide can be found here:
http://www.revenue.ie/pdf/04_12_CETI_06.pdf
I think the price is based on the value and description written on the customs declaration form the sender would have filled in.
Amazing, I’ve sent ya lots of stuff worth more than that and no bite. Well I guess it all evens out in the end.
I’ve a friend in Canada who gets stuff from the states by post with no problem but when she gets stuff from United Parcel Service (a big but useless courier firm in the States) they always hit her for 35CDN customs brokerage fee. She now refuses UPS.
Was your stuff by regular post or FedEx or something like that?
Roller Blades?
Yep, you sure have! According to the postman (was delivered by regular post), he’s only ever had to collect money two or three times for customs in all his years delivering parcels. He said it may have something do do with the size of the box that was delivered (which was rather large, damn big feet!).
And yup, roller blades. Something I’ve been doing with varying degrees of success for the past few years. Unfortunately, there’s not as much of a skating culture here as there is over there, or in many parts of Europe, but, it’s a really great way of keeping fit and having fun when your at it!