How side channels cost me DKK 160.

I buy a lot of stuff from dealextreme.com. Usually I try to keep it under DKK 80, as this means that I would not get fined DKK 160 by the Danish Postal service.

According to them, this balances out the costs of having to charge you the VAT and occasionally import duties. I didn’t believe them, and I would get pissed and call them every time I had to pay this fine, just to get something out of my money.

Usually this would end up with another person being equally pissed at me for wasting their time. In my mind, the process would look a little like this:

• Parcel going by a customs officer, who deems me worthy of a fine.
• Customs officer scans the barcode - which has every information needed to preform a customs declaration.
• A printer spits out a letter for me with the fine included
• I hand in the letter of indulgence and pay in return for my goods.

This entire process in my mind would cost around DKK 30, given that it might take a maximum of 5 minutes of their time to preform. Therefore if I try to avoid paying import duties, it is only due to the Danish Postal Service being complete jerks.

This brings me back to todays experiences. After a package from DealExteme had floated around in the Danish Postal Service for 21 days (getting to Denmark from Hong Kong took less than 3 days), I went down to the Post Office to try to sort these things out. After an initial confusion, they managed to find my package and almost handed it over without any fines. But I was not so lucky. From the back of the Post Office, “Remember to charge the import duties”, an elderly lady screamed.

DKK 40 in VAT, 160 in fines.

I didn’t want to complain this time. Fearing they would send it into the postal gyre again, I paid up. To my amazement they had, without having to contact me, figured out the price of my goods.

Nothing was revealed on the front side. Not even DealExtreme was mentioned. The customs declaration was conveniently lying about price. HKD 45 is nowhere near the USD 29.88 I bought it for.

But somehow they found out. From my receipt, they knew it was from DealExtreme.

I was curios wether they just had estimated the price or how they came up with that number. I checked my invoice: USD 29.88. 

I turned the package around. 3 small numbers was the only thing. I entered the numbers into the search box dealextreme.com, there it was.

For once, they earned their DKK 160. Tomorrow I will send them their diploma.