1/29/11

Spain´s heard all the bad things I´ve said about their postal service. They´ve impounded that package you sent, and it´s stuck at the airport in Madrid.

They´re saying that there are ´taxable´ materials inside. (aka Spain wants money). The office can get it out, but what they need is a complete (tell me about it) list of every thing inside, and prices for everything. Then I´ll have to pay for it.

If it´s like a bag of rice krispy treats you made, that´s not taxable(I´m not sure how they´d tax it) But anything else, the peanut butter, toothbrushes, all of it, they need prices for. If it was just laying around the house, make up a reasonable price for it, I guess.

It´s not the first time it´s happened to a missionary. But what happens if you just ignore it is that they´ll send it back to the US...in about three months. And with no shipping refund. So we´re time sensitive here. I´ll need it by Monday so I can print it out and take it to the office on Tuesday.

Supposedly, to get around it, from now on, things need to look used. Obviously, we can´t do anything about peanut butter (and I don´t think that´s what they´re wanting to tax), but for example, if you sent a shirt, you´d need to strip off all the packaging, wrinkle it a good bit, maybe even wash it once or twice. Used stuff they can´t tax.

I know this is a huge pain in the butt, and we´ll have to think of other ways to get stuff here if it´s anything serious in the future, but it´s better than waiting three months or so to get it back in the US...without refund.

Happy weekend...

Bradley