Going Postal

I'm having an "I hate South Africa" day. I don't really hate South Africa, of course. I'm usually one of its biggest fans and defenders. But occasionally I come up against maddening (to me) bureaucracy, and I want to scream.

Today a birthday package for my daughter finally arrived, a month after it was shipped (Despite what the U.S. postal service says about airmail to South Africa taking 7-10 days, it actually takes 3-4 weeks. Always. Don't know why, but it does). I usually have to pay a R25 clearance fee to fetch the parcel.

Today, however, they tried to charge me R302-43 to fetch the parcel. They charged me the full amount of the package's declared value, VAT (value added tax of 14%), a clearance fee of R25 and an import fee. So... in essence they wanted me to pay more than 100% of the value of the package, just to fetch it.

The post office lady told me I have to phone the Johannesburg Foreign Parcel Distribution Centre (who knew there was one?), but they would just tell me to write a letter which I must bring back to her (the lady who was helping me), and she would then send the parcel back to Johannesburg for reassessment. They would reduce the fee back to R25 and send it back to her. This will take about 3 weeks, she told me. I asked her why I can't bypass the whole 3-week red tape nightmare and just pay the R25 now. She just repeated the whole process to me and got angry.

So I phoned the Johannesburg Foreign Parcel Distribution Centre and was put on hold forever. The music playing in the background - I am not making this up - was ice cream truck music. You know, eight measures of horrid synthesised-glockenspiel music played over and over and over and over again. When I finally got a real person, she just told me that the lady who handles foreign parcels left for the day and I would have to phone again tomorrow. I asked her why she couldn't help me. She replied that she doesn't deal with foreign parcels. But, I reminded her, I'm phoning the Johannesburg Foreign Parcel Distribution Centre. Yes, she retorted, but the woman who handles foreign parcels left already. So.... what do you do? She replied that she handles the M.O. desk, whatever that is. And apparently, the M.O. desk and the foreign parcel desk keep different hours.

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!