I purchased a rare, vintage, N.O.S. AMAL brand carby from the UK recently. It turned up 2 weeks later. First thing I noticed on opening were the rounded off nuts and bolts, and various dents and scratches in the brass surfaces, and lots of the smaller fittings were loose. The choke shutter was slightly bent too. It became clear to me that someone had attacked this carby with poorly fitting metric-sized spanners, shifters, and needle-nosed pliers in an attempt to pull it all apart. One tiny brass fitting was close to being cross threaded, so I am glad whoever pulled it apart did not succeed in getting it all back together. Obviously this became too hard of a task with rudimentary tools and no patience, so the perpetrator just gave up and threw it back in the box for forwarding to me. There were no "Opened for Inspection by Customs" labels on the box, but it was clear to see that the box had been opened and taped back up again. And no, it did not go through the Global Shipping Program. It was just sent by International Air Mail. The only people who could have tampered with it were Customs, either just before it left the UK or just after it arrived here.
What a way to stuff up a quality product! Couldn't they have just given it to a dog to sniff, or ran one of those fine probe cameras up inside it? They have de-valued what was a very rare and expensive quality product by at least $100. And now these same people are complaining that they want an extra $5 added to every parcel coming in from overseas to cover their inspection costs. We can only hope that they up their skills and equipment a bit in the process, if this Draconian "Claytons tax" is ever imposed.
* Claytons tax = A tax the Government introduces when they are not really having a tax, but just needing an excuse to profit off everybody's ebay purchases.
