OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums General Discussion Forum Off Topics Customs wrecked my carby!

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.

You must be ropeable. Looks like the number came up with your package. They reserve the right to open up random packages to check for contraband and I suspect the employee concerned deliberately skipped the label to cover their skin. They now want to gouge money for the privilege!
Maybe send in a letter outlining your grievance and see what they say, but I get the feeling you will hit dead ends.
ACA may be your only hope!

You are very lucky they didn't hit you with the $100 inspection fee that I have been stung with. Problem was the item had cost me about $200 so I had no choice to pay up. A mate of mine had bought a nut for an Enfield gearbox for $2 and they hit him with the $100 inspection fee. Guess what he told them to do with the gearbox nut and he just ordered another one and that came through customs with no problems. Complete luck of the draw and if they put this $5 tax on the stuff I get from overseas,that is the end for me I will just shut up doing anything and just watch TV

It could have been worse. A mate of mine got some rare WW2 memorabilia from the UK a few years ago. Customs not only opened it for inspection, but they confiscated one item because they said it contained "dirt". They had somehow lost the original box so had sent it on to him in a flimsy biscuit packet that they must have found in the trash. They had included a bill inside the package amounting to $100 for decontamination by irradiation. But that was not the end of it. Somehow they had also managed to lose about half dozen other items from the package worth about $300. He complained, but was told the officer who had inspected the package was now away on leave. (How convenient!) A few days later a packet turned up in the mail with a few (but not all) of the lost items, together with a hastily scrawled note "These were found on the floor". I can vouch for this story because I was there when he opened both packages. Appalling and unprofessional conduct, but these so-called public servants know they are the ones who are in charge and we are their servants. They are above the law and answer to nobody.

Your kinda lucky they didn't take it out to a remote field and blow it up fearing it was a bomb. Paranoia is rampant now. We just had case where a guy was killed for holding a cell phone calling it a gun. I am actually getting afraid to come near any law enforcement personnel. Recently at our local courthouse I had to remove my steel cap boots because they were setting off the metal detector and the operator would not accept my word and labels on them as the truth. I was surprised they didn't strip search me along with a cavity search because of the fuss I made about taking my boots off.

This why I insure most packages outbound here. They hate that as they know they are on the hook for the damages. I have only a had one $2000 package damaged and it looked like they took a steam roller to it. It was like pulling teeth without deadner to get reimbursed, but finally I got the full insured value. My boss at the time had threaten to fire me for insuring the package for so much but he was glad he didn't need to pay for the customer's equipment as it was sent to the warranty center after this happened.

Oh these inspectors are also thieves to (my opinion) as I've had packages opened even witinh the 48 state mainland here and arrived with parts missing, I got packages that only contain one gasket and the expensive one with the bearings where removed. Security tape broken. Package was shipped at 15lbs but so light I could easily palm it. Basically it was just the weight of the box itself. The shipper had to resend the parts and file a claim with the carrier. Good thing I would let the carrier leave without noting the problem and let them open the box in his presence.

I am with Norm here, if they add many more fees I will need to close up the shop and I am considering do it in 10 years anyway as it is getting to be too big of a hassle getting parts and abiding by all the regulations that they are constantly adding.

They just added import tariffs on steel and aluminum here, I have seen the 25% increase on the steel parts already. A Briggs gas tank I was selling last year for $96 is now $125. The consumers are stupid too as they think only the manufactures are going to pay these fees when it is the end user that will pay it ultimately.

We could never work out how I could buy an item from China for 50 cents and have Australia post deliver it to my door when I think the min postage cost for a letter here is $1. Something had to happen but it will probably spell the end of what I have been doing for the last few years

It is because they make it up off us small users.

I similar problems even our First class is currently 50 cents for ounce domestic yet I get packages from China for a just few dollars. I even in bound package stateside that are at least half of what it takes me to send them out.

I recently had a new UC to fail and needed to send it back to Canada for warranty repairs. They want me to send via US mail back but it was going to cost me $89 one way. Then I called the Canadian company and they sold me a round trip shipping label for $35. This I was willing to pay to have a $200 UC repaired.

These crazy shipping rates just don't end either. I ordered a spindle out California and was charged $6 to get it but was charged $14 to ship it back. The worst of it was the company I order from charged me a 30% restocking fee for a defective item so I ended wasting that $35.00.

Hopefully somebody in grubberment will work out that it will probably cost them more to administer/control the tax than the $5 they will get from it, but then again there is not that many smart ones in there and at the end of the day it isn't their money they are wasting anyway so why should they care

Norm, have you ever tried to post something to China? I sent a small part over there once to see if a Chinese company could replicate it. I ended up changing my mind, because even though they could make the part for about $1, they demanded a minimum order of 500. So all of a sudden it got far too expensive and I knew I would never be able to sell the rest. The crazy thing was the postage. To air mail a single part to the address in China cost me a small fortune in itself. I recall it was something like $60 for the postage, and that had only basic insurance cover and no tracking. But the Chinese company sent the part back to me for nothing. When we go on ebay nearly all those Chinese ebay ads offer "free shipping". So what we have in the Western world are highly inflated postage prices, mainly because so many people demand insurance and tracing. But even basic postage has gone through the roof. I wonder how long it will be before our postage services literally price themselves out of the market? My guess is if lots of people suddenly stop shipping parcels because it becomes too expensive to do so, suddenly the postal services will be forced to lower their prices again.

Hi VM,

Australia Post, Royal Mail, USPS and Canada Post are all going to be in rapid decline shortly as they want to make huge profits from these partly privatised businesses.

I like many have come to the point where buying from overseas is just not viable anymore. Our dollar is crap against the Green Back, Pound and Euro and simply our cost of living is just too high now along with the rest of the Western world. There has to be a correction in the world economy some where as it's just escalating out of control. This is why the Chinese have got us by the nuts. If we stopped providing them with the raw materials they'd go broke overnight, but the mining companies won't have a bar of that. We're cutting off our nose to spite our face.

I know what normally has been the correction, but we don't want that either, do we ?

So what's the answer ??


Cheers,
BB..

Alien intervention because humans won't fix it, especially with those insipid millennials taking over the reigns.
Hopefully, whomever the next generation is, will try and undo the damage done by boomers, X gen and mi-crappials.

VM I haven't tried sending anything to China but a few years ago I wanted to do a swap on some motorcycle rearsets for a standard set of foot pegs with a bloke in the US who wanted my rear sets. His postage to me was going to be quite reasonable but the postage of mine to him was stupid money so everybody missed out because it was a pointless exercise on my part