Hacker News Reader

I get those messages too. There are three options:

1. Pay the courier company to take care of customs.

2. Go to the customs office and do it yourself. I remember discussing with a customs officer what category a Soekris net4501 really was. ;)

3. Return the parcel.

The good news is that Amazon, Ebay, Aliexpress and some others deal with it now. Anyone who sells via Ebay can have the customs stuff processed by Ebay for a much more reasonable fee.

View on HN

OK, so the issue is unpaid customs fees, which you can pay the courier to sort out for you. I thought they were demanding extra postage or something like that.

Say you order an USB-to-centronics adapter from China. Then the DHL/whatever courier brings it to you and says "you have to pay €1.07 VAT on that, and also a €25 handling charge to DHL for acting as a middleman between you and the customs office". That €25 stings.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com