I feel like you were expected to pay a gratuity several times in that process and they were baffled you didn't.
You tell the person "I was told I had to pay this <X fee> to release my package but I don't know who or where I pay" while waving the cash around cluelessly. The person will 100% then offer to take it and "handle it from there" under the stupid guise of plausibility.
I tried giving a gift to some, as thanks for letting me sleep on their couch. They told me no no no. I asked my friends about it, they told me it's about face.
Omg, I get that honor is a big thing, but it makes normal interactions way more complicated.
"You'll have to pop in next time you're in the area!" does NOT mean "turn up at my house unannounced". Even if it sounds like it.
Or "How are you going?" is not a prompt to actually tell them how you're going.
I'm told that, in China, a way to greet someone is to say: "Have you eaten yet?" 你吃了吗
You are not supposed to provide a detailed answer such as: "Yes I ate a breakfast sandwich this morning at 8 am".
Instead you simply say "I ate" (吃了) or "Nope" (没呢)
Some areas may have it to a lesser extent (China were the cultural revolution steam rolled everything and only left superstition) but the concepts shared remain the same,the expression of the pattern varies widely.
Sounds like they thought they caught a reseller endangering somebodies sales friendship.
Regarding money, you should start with cash. Have an amount you think is fair on your pocket. Tell them this is what you have and thank for their help. If they don’t look happy or they reject/ask for more, tell them it though, but that you need check if you have more in your car. If the difference is a lot, say you need to ask friend for help. Go back to your car, pretend to talk to someone and come back with more. If they really want a lot more, ask for they’re bank account and tell them you’ll need to transfer (throughout make sure to show them that they asking for a lot and this is very hard for you, you have kids, need to eat, get a cab, pay a loan, etc). Also if you tell them you’ll transfer from a different bank than theirs, they might settle on the cash because interbank transfers are not same day.
All this varies by country and what methods of payment are available.
Maybe if you are doing more serious stuff like business or real estate it makes sense.
Most of the time when you need to deal with a government agency you’d go through one of them. They don’t advertise that they’ll bribe people to get it done but that’s how it works.
At least people in Vietnam don't kid themselves and call a bribe a bribe.
Paying a third party is just as illegal. However, unless you’re expecting to run for Congress, nobody is going to care that you bribed some low level foreign customs agent to get your ink cartridges released.
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One of the major scandals associated with the Dole family is the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. Sanford Ballard Dole used his government influence and self-appointed position in Hawaii to push the US toward taking over the islands in the late 1890s. The Dole fruit company in Hawaii rose out of the bloodless Hawaiian coup staged by the Dole and the US government in 1893. Another scandal involved the Dole Food Company, where a jury found that Dole should pay $2.5 million in punitive damages to five workers who claimed they were made sterile by use of a pesticide on Nicaraguan banana plantations in the 1970s.
Grease payments are paid for the purpose of expediting a task that a low-level official is required to do anyway as part of their job, e.g. release a package from customs hell.
The FCPA prohibits bribes which are payments intended to influence high-level decision-makers to make a decision in your favor when they are not otherwise required to do so.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Ac...