Battleangel | Personal

The BTTF (Back to the Future (Trilogy)) finally arrived today. A few days late and as I feared it had been taxed and “penalized” with the ordinary gestapo fees that are habitual with a customs bust. You know the drill .. 25% tax + 63 SEK for pencil pushing and finally the spiteful 25 SEK for the great privilege of paying for all of this at the local postal office.
I had a long and pointless discussion with the brainless clerk at the postal office, where I stood my ground and didn’t want to pay the additional 25 SEK. I demanded a giro account number so that I could get around the fee and was of course turned down.

Out of spite and because I needed time to regroup and rethink I demanded that the package would be returned to the customs dept. of the Arlanda postal office for recalculation. With a big grin on my face I wished them a very expensive delivery, turned around and left the building. I will probably repeat this a couple of times until I receive a phone call or letter from Arlanda and then I can yell at them instead. Maybe the package is damaged in the endless shipping and I can get to them that way. Either way this will be as costly for the Postal service as giving me the package for free .. believe me.

Anyway, as I walked out, a woman hailed me with the words “Good luck!”. I met the admiring or in some cases frightened faces of the people who were waiting in line. That is what I live for I suppose. Forever fighting the world.

Of course I do not stop at petty conflicts at the postal office. During the day I had further contact with the Ministry of Commerce as well as Customs and Postal officials. While I could never presume to get rid of all of the above fees, there might be a small but important breakthrough in the near future with the introduction of the “electronic customs service”. I’m not going to bore you with the details but among other things it will be possible to declare you own cargo and receive a bill for the amount later. I suggested that I would be included in an upcoming pilot project (I love projects …). We’ll see what happens.