Never - check your email.

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You're right : The Shopping Problem headline isn't up to date anymore. I don't want A&E to have any disadvantages because of this thread after having been that generous.

I'm back and finally trying to keep up to date with all the ADT-posts and reviews I have missed.
I've had a great time although I really have thought about that customs stuff a few times.

I will go to the address they sent me on monday morning and try to get everything done.

There are two things I'm wondering about :

1. I've only gotten one notification although A&E obviously sent the order twice. I don't know if I shouldn't get another notification for the second package. I'm actually afraid again that one of the orders has vanished somehow (maybe I'm getting paranoid after my long time of bad luck).

2. How do I prove to them that I didn't pay anything for the packages ?
In the old thread someone said I should bring my credit-card-statements with me. The problem is that I didn't get any statement yet telling me that I got the money back.

Well... maybe I'll find out on monday but if anybody already got a few ideas concerning this please let me know.

BTW:

DB- I've just read your email. Wow... That was really great ! There's actually building up some anticipation of what to expect on monday .
I'll let you know what it was like for real .

Edited by - spesedy on Jan 13 2001

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Well... I've been at the custom's office this morning and my worst expectations came true (don't know where to find the right smily for this ).

I entered an old room with 5 guys inside obviously not doing very much. I couldn't see many computers there. Just some old crooks with most of the writing still being done with pencils and typewriters. The guys weren't particularly sexy, but I guess after DB's story everything had to be a disappointment

I went to this guy asking him what that green card meant they had sent me and handed it out to him. He said : 'Oh well... Let's take a look at that package.'
Since on the card they didn't check the box for 'information about the contents' but a box called 'Number of the wares referring to the custom toll tariff table' (or something like this - is really difficult to translate) I thought I had to pick some number from a list best describing the content and sign some document saying I'm telling the truth.

Well... I guess that would have been too easy. Instead that one guy put the package on a counter in front of me and said 'So what's supposed to be in there ?'.
I looked at him and guess I might have blushed a little.
As some of you people might have noticed I'm quite open-minded, but when some older guy from custom who has certainly never seen anything like a sex toy in his whole life asks me a question like that I can get a bit shy

So I answered something like 'Well... ahmmmm... I guess you could call it kind of "Adult Toys"'.
Then he said 'Would you please open the package so we can take a look inside ?'.
No need to mention that wasn't really a question :)
So I had to open the package and had to watch this guy take a close look at the contents and I felt really bad at that moment. He took this Fleshlight-thingy and wondered 'What's this ? This is really a lot of packaging !', and he turned it around and looked at it from any direction until he found out there's a cap he could screw open. So he did, and what was looking at him from the inside was a pair of pussy lips.

I started feeling more and more uncomfortable, and the other guys in the room started showing some interest in what was going on there.
Then the guy who had inspected the package's contents told me I could put everything back in there and sat down in front of his old computer typing in some stuff and telling me I had to pay 6% for custom and 16% for the imported wares. Then he asked me how much the package cost, and I said 'Well... Nothing.'
'Nothing ?'
'Yep, I pay nothing for that.'
'Why don't you pay anything ? On the box it says something about $115.'

I was thinking about how to explain this to him and suddenly found a great story I could tell him :

'Well... I'm writing articles for an American Online-Magazine about this stuff, and I get it for free in order to do these articles.'
(Thanks go out to ADT for that great idea )

I told him 'I can even prove that I don't pay anything for that by showing you my creditcard statements once I get them.'
I could see he was getting very confused about this story and didn't know what to do, but then he said 'OK. But this stuff's value is stated on the box and you imported it to Germany, so you have to pay the tax.'
I'm really glad I didn't have to pay for the content since $25 for just importing that stuff seems quite a lot to me.

He asked me if I had the money with me, and I answered I couldn't give it to him in cash, but he could charge my bank-card or my credit-card.
You have to know that most small to medium stores in Germany and obviously all governmental offices don't take cards for payment at the moment. I guess this will take another few years of development. So his answer was 'Sorry, we only take cash or cheques. But you can go to a bank and get the money.'

So I went to the next bank I knew, got the money and returned. My package was still there on the counter open for anybody to see. I thought they'd at least take it away while I'm not there, and somehow I also got the feeling they might have taken another look at it while I was away :}

When I wanted to give the money to this guy he said : 'Oh... You can't pay that here.'
He gave me some documents and had to sign and said 'You have to take these papers to our payment office and pay there.'
I asked 'Where IS the payment office ?' and he answered 'Right over there !' and pointed towards a colleague sitting about 8 feet away from him behind some glass window'. I really couldn't resist grinning at that moment.

So I went to that other guy. He was sitting there with his back turned to me and was writing something with a pencil on a piece of paper. Suddenly he raised his arm and stumbled something I couldn't understand. Then I knocked at the glass window and he shouted 'YEAH !!! I HAVE SEEN YOU ! JUST WAIT A MINUTE, OK ?!'
I answered 'Oh sorry, I didn't know you saw me because I'm no fortune teller.' - he said 'THAT CAN'T BE ! YOU SAW THAT I RAISED MY HAND, DIDN'T YOU ?!'
I wanted to get out there as quickly as possible and stopped arguing with him. When he had time for me he took the money and asked me if I had a 1 cent coin (btw: everything transferred into American units) so it would be easier for him. I took a quick look into my wallet, and of course I found a 1 cent coin, and of course I told him 'Sorry... Got none...'

Then he did something in there for about five minutes, came back and gave me a confirmation that I had payed. With this confirmation I could go back to the guy from the beginning of this story and get the package.

WOW... German burocracy is really frightening. I got my package and was away faster than anybody in there could say 'burocracy sucks'.

So... Unfortunately Dumblonde's story didn't come true, but I'm really glad I actually got that package now.
I'm still a bit worried though since it's obvious that A&E sent two packages and the guys at custom said that only one of them arrived until now.
I know maybe I shouldn't be that 'greedy' since I got my order once without paying for it, but on the other hand A&E generously gave those two packages to me as a gift and I also simply don't like the imagination of things vanishing on their way. I don't know what happened to that second package, and I got the feeling it might never arrive. Oh well... At least I got something to try today

Edited by - spesedy on Jan 15 2001

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About cc statements: when a shipment was once missing a proper invoice, I was asked to get "something" from my credit card company. I simply went web, printed resent trans-actions and that was it. Hardly anything official or recommendable, but worked for me that time.

Edited by - absinthe on Jan 15 2001

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The same goes for talking to customs people. As I said before I was very uncomfortable with that situation, but I know how many crazy people there are out there and that the customs agents certainly find very weird things in those packages quite often. Thinking about that in such a situation helps. My ex-girlfriend works in a hospital, and she always told me stories about lots of people being braught there with bottles or other strange devices up their ass or vagina trying to explain they had fallen so unluckily when doing their housework, men with bloody penises who 'accidentally' got into their vacuum cleaner when trying to clean up the house, etc., etc.

Well... Anybody knows it's a lie, so why not simply tell the truth and reduce the pity to a minimum ? That's what I try to think about when encountering such a situation.
Although this time the story about the online-magazine helped a lot

@absinthe:

@dvdman101:

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Thanks a lot for the link to that site. It's quite interesting.

I have to correct one of my earlier statements as well. This guy told me about the 6% and calculated. Later when I came back to pay he said he had accidentally calculated a wrong value and recalculated it. It was a few cents higher now. After taking a look on the papers he gave me I saw that he finally calculated with 6.5%.

I went to the TARIC database and tried to find out the right number. I found out the following number which I also found on the customs papers a little time later

3926 90 99 90

This is the TARIC-number for miscellaneous products made of plastic.

It also says 6.5% so it's obviously the right number.

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