Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2018 16:58:58 GMT
I just got trapped in the YouTube dimension watching endless episodes of "Nothing to Declare". A UK Reality programme covering the activities of Customs and Immigration at the UK Borders.
Fascinating, at least for me. But then I'm a bit of an addict for this type of programming.
I am amazed at how much people will risk for how little a financial gain. I just watched one where a guy was caught smuggling 800 cigarettes. 800!! WTF for? 40 Packets. I don't know what cigarettes cost, but even if it is a tenner a packet that's a maximum of 400 quid. Why on earth do they think it is worth it?
I would be a shit smuggler, I exhibit all the nervousness and body language of a bulk heroin smuggler even when I am totally innocent. I'd be a gibbering wreck if I was actually carrying anything I shouldn't be.
I never carry anything I shouldn't. In a working life time of crossing international borders at least once every week of my life, I have never carried anything which was not either within my limit or that I didn't declare.
Without asking anybody to confess to anything, does anybody here ever play fast and loose with the limits?
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Post by Humph on Aug 30, 2018 18:08:53 GMT
Nope, never chanced it, as you say, what would be the point for a few packets of fags or whatever.
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WDB
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Post by WDB on Aug 30, 2018 19:33:19 GMT
The bike I lost in Liège the other week I bought from Freewheeling of Austin, while I was working there (for the big IT company, not the bike shop) in 1997. There was the advantage of choice, of models not imported to the US, but there was also a distinct exchange rate advantage; a $100 thing there would be about £100 in the UK, but a dollar was, from memory, about 60p.
Even with this, it was a relatively expensive item, well above the £130 or so I was allowed to bring in from an non-EU country. So when the bike and I arrived back at Birmingham Airport, I dutifully took the bike, with all the paperwork from the dealer, through the red channel. I soon found myself in a windowless room, while a man with an H&K guarded the door. It took the better part of an hour to convince my customs officer that the price on the invoice was the price I had paid. Just as I was wondering when the rubber gloves would appear, the in-house bike expert answered his phone and confirmed that my story was credible and — probably — true.
I was required to pay £99 in VAT and duty — and excused paying anything further on the Levis and CDs I also confessed to. Hardly an ordeal — but an experience that stayed with me. How anyone who was genuinely up to no good would feel is hard to imagine.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2018 20:16:23 GMT
I used to smoke a lot. So when I visited the UK I *always* brought cigarettes with me and I *always* brought more than the allowed 200. usually 600 I guess.
I used to arrive, walk straight into the red channel and seek to declare them. There used to be a button to press to call for attention from customs. I have waited as long as 15 minutes to be attended. I never once paid duty, always being asked to confirm that was all I had over the limit and then told to run along as it wasn't enough to bother with.
Clearly they were simply not interested in people who wanted to declare, it was what people were tying to hide that interested them. I can see the logic, but if I was a smuggler I might play the game of declaring a little bit...
I can do that boldly, but walk through the green channel with even 201 cigarettes? I'd die from the stress of trying.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2018 21:59:30 GMT
Which dept. and building were you in WDB?
I was there between '94 and '99. First in AIX development in 905 and then with ITSO across the road in 503 (now a shopping mall).
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2018 22:50:38 GMT
I have never chanced it with customs. Never will.
In the old days (before high speed tinternet connections) I would regularly carry tapes of software from one country to another and declare them. Even though the software could be worth megabucks they only considered the cost of the media and always told me to bugger off.
On the other hand, a colleague was once visiting a production facility in Germany and was asked to bring back a couple of hundred PCB jumpers. Coming back to the UK through the green channel he was pulled by customs and held for 6 hours until our customs agent managed to get him released. Total value about 10 bucks.
It still baffles me why we have "Duty Free" alcohol at airports and airlines still allow it onboard. All it does is fill the overhead lockers with flammable liquids, add weight to the aircraft and those who buy it could probably find it cheaper at their destination anyway.
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Rob
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Post by Rob on Aug 30, 2018 23:05:58 GMT
I've met someone in Greece from the UK that took a box of wine with them in their luggage! Why? And others on Trip Advisor say they take bottles of spirit. No idea why you'd do that. This is not stuff bought after security at the airport.
We've brought back some Greek wine from the airport a few times though.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 31, 2018 5:51:33 GMT
After an American trip a few years ago I landed and went to the red channel with tens of CDs and lots of other small stuff, plus a new camera. I opened my mouth and started explaining what I had.
The customs guy looked at me, shook his head and said "you've got nothing to declare really have you". I just went dumb and replied "on no, sorry for troubling you" and walked on.
I have no idea why he did that but it saved me hundreds of pounds.
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WDB
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Post by WDB on Aug 31, 2018 6:37:46 GMT
Which dept. and building were you in WDB? I was there between '94 and '99. First in AIX development in 905 and then with ITSO across the road in 503 (now a shopping mall). Now you’re testing my memory! In 1997 I was there to write a Redbook on a proto-thin client OS product that sank without trace. That was in the big building on the west site of Burnet Road — 45, was it? I was there for five weeks, I think. Before that I had a two-month stay in 1991, in one of the 900 buildings while the others were still going up. That was my first visit to the US. I still have the Don’t Mess With Texas belt buckle I bought at Sheplers. |
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Alanović
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Post by Alanović on Aug 31, 2018 8:31:43 GMT
After an American trip a few years ago I landed and went to the red channel with tens of CDs and lots of other small stuff, plus a new camera. I opened my mouth and started explaining what I had. The customs guy looked at me, shook his head and said "you've got nothing to declare really have you". I just went dumb and replied "on no, sorry for troubling you" and walked on. I have no idea why he did that but it saved me hundreds of pounds. I think I'm a little bit on the "spectrum", so to speak, and I'd have trouble working out if that hint from the customs wonk was a hint to sod off or a genuine question, so it'd be difficult for me to not say "yes, actually I've got x,y,z..."
I remember driving back to the UK from Amsterdam after a 1st year University end-of-exams celebratory trip in my mate's Nan's beige Austin Montego. At the Belgian frontier (pre-Schengen etc) the officer asked us where we'd been and numpty boy in the back screams delightedly "Amsterdam!! Woo Hooo!" Cue an hour of strip searches and questioning and sniffer dogs and all that. Thank Christ none of the idiots I was with was stupid enough to have actually tried to bring anything exotic back. I'm amazed the dogs didn't pick up a bit of residue on clothing to be honest. I was bricking myself.
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WDB
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Post by WDB on Aug 31, 2018 9:00:11 GMT
Very hard to even walk through Amsterdam without picking up some traces of Substances. I sometimes smell it on my clothes when I’m sorting them to wash. Belgian dogs must get inured to it.
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Post by Humph on Aug 31, 2018 9:18:18 GMT
...I sometimes smell it on my clothes when I’m sorting them to wash... Jeez, I thought you were married? Sorry if things have sort of deteriorated on the domestic front, phew, you're reduced to sorting washing now? Blimey. Chin up old man. |
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WDB
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Post by WDB on Aug 31, 2018 15:44:00 GMT
I reckon it’s a generational thing, Humph. Those of us that grew up with an electric washing machine in the house aren’t afraid of them. If it was a case of bashing your sporran against a rock in the burn...
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Post by tyrednexited on Aug 31, 2018 15:53:07 GMT
If it was a case of bashing your sporran against a rock in the burn... Euphemism? |
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Rob
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Post by Rob on Aug 31, 2018 17:45:04 GMT
Crossing back from Czechoslovakia to Germany in 1990 we were asked if we had anything to declare. I think the driver had bought a few bottles of something or other.
The border guard asking had his sub-machine gun to hand and then joked about how many hundreds of bottles he had in the boot.
There was equipment to take tyres off wheels where we had stopped in no-mans-land.
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