Most, if not all, countries in the world reserve the right to charge import duty for items being brought into the country. On top of being a revenue stream for the local government, it also helps protect the local economy. So I consider the concept of charging duty to be a good practice in concept. The problem is that sometimes the fees are unreasonable.
This has happened to us before. Once, when we were serving at The Pines, a woman sent a Valentine's Day party in a box. Some cupcakes, a red table cloth, some hats, cinnamon candies, etc... Maybe a $30 value. I don't remember exactly what the import duty was, but for some reason about $75 sticks in my head. Obviously not worth it, right? We had to send it back on appeal. They revalued the duties at $3 and finally returned the parcel...in July that year! So the Valentine's party was a bit late.
But that was nothing! In July I ordered a $12 book from the States to use as a Bible Study guide in our small groups. It left the States 3 days after I ordered it, and then promptly took an additional 2 months to work its way through the SA Postal System where it finally arrived at our local post office. They don't deliver parcels to houses because of security problems. Instead they deliver a "Parcel Notification" and you have to go in to pick it up. We eventually get our parcel notification and go to get the book.
When Amber walks into the post office the clerk smiles and says "I've been waiting for you." Amber assumes it's because we've stopped by several times each week looking for the book. But alas, that would have been such a simple solution. The clerk asks Amber if she'd looked at the duty charge on the notification. We hadn't.
Now, before I say what the amount was, I need to bring you up to speed on the current exchange rate. For the last several months the Dollars to Rand currency exchange rate has been very favourable to those who have Dollars, a fact for which we are very thankful. The rate has hovered between R13 per $1 to R15 per $1. Historically it varies significantly, but a good rate is R10 per $1. So that means that currently 10 Dollars will exchange to about 135 Rands.
Well, the clerk pulls out the Duty slip to show Amber. Here's what it read:
I know that's hard to read the amount, so let me zoom in:
In case you're wondering, that's R20,998.28. Or, converted to dollars, it's $1,507.24. Yes, that's right. For a $12 book they wanted to charge us over $1,500! So of course, we sent the book back for appeal! The only problem is, we were supposed to start that study in our small groups at the beginning of October. So it's going to be a while. No worries, though. We've found a different study to use in the meantime. But they'll need to SIGNIFICANTLY reduce that amount to even make it worth our while to redeem that book from the Postal System.
Thus, in some situations, Duty should be properly spelled "D-O-O-D-I-E".