Mail, Customs and such.

[Splitpin]

Over the past few weeks I've been global shopping...as you do.
Stuff arriving from Germany, Switzerland, Uzbekistan, the US, UK and Australia.
Germany, Switzerland were pretty much as expected...but timely, Uzbekistan the same.
The U.S one was a bit different , moved from the buyer (overland from Arizona) to my shipping address in Portland...down to LA, then to SFO, and onto AKL etc.
The one that impressed me the most , was from the UK...ordered on the 16th of this month, and in AKL today.

I had a small problem from Customs with the U.S parcel. The sender had stated the value of the shipment as $17.50 USD, but I had paid $125 USD.
I had to produce a sales invoice, and a copy of the actual order confirmation. It seems Customs need more info these days..."gift"or sample ...ie , no value is no longer acceptable, which is fine by me....but why make me jump through hoops because the seller didn't do something right.

Anyway...more power to Royal Mail...no bullshit, just send it .....and then sadly another 5 days sitting in AKL with customs and NZ Post ....

[Charl]

A while ago, there was a scam operating on Akl customs/forwarding agents.
They had hacked into the delivery database, and sent out emails saying "Customs excess payable on your item", if payment not received within 2 working days item would be returned to sender.
The link and payment structure looked totally kosher... but was not.
I called DHL when I got it, to make sure, and was told No Such Thing.

[SA227]

I have stuff arriving frequently for my fixed based sim, mostly out of OZ and China. I avoid more than NZD1000 so don't get hit with duty.

Cubesim in China have been excellent and send me multiple parcels if the value is too high and I just pay a bit of extra freight. Although they do tend to go the long way round the world for some reason.