On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 1:37 PM, TheBigBoss <thebigboss@peperuka.com> wrote:
If you are not happy with prices to be paid (by customs officers), you can ask to speak to "the big boss". So I paid a second visit to thebigboss who welcomed me again with ("so what now mzungu don't want to pay tax"). From what I have seen, he is spending his days on Google Shoppping, Amazon and Ebay. So, I ask him to check the value of the item on Amazon and set price based on current market price; which he did within a minute. So to make it short, disagree, ask to see the boss, search on the web current market price and make sure you are charge 25 % + 16 %.
I had a similar experience a while back. I got a deal on a auction on ebay -- they guy at the GPO counter happily ignored the declared price of the item (which was the auction value) and told me the value was "too low" and he applied an arbitrary price for calculating duty + vat. Luckily i had an invoice -- went to "the big boss" -- who wanted to ignore the invoice price ...because the price on google product search was higher ... Anyway, he agreed when i showed him price variance in shopping on the internet, and complained about the post office wasting my time.