Eesti Post Takes It Up a Notch

True story.

While doing a favor for a friend I got something shipped from Japan. So it's the usual, I get a notification and I go to the post office. There's no line, but somehow I end up waiting for 15 minutes anyway. Oops, I'm getting off the subject.

Now the girl behind the little counter makes me fill out a huge stack of papers and tells me that I owe 310EEK's to the Postal Service. 210 for import tax and 100 as some kind of fee. I'm sure there was real original explanation for it or maybe not, could've just been a processing fee.

I look at the girl and ask "Do I have a choice?". She replies "No, if you want your package". So I pay.

It's only later that I realize the days date and also the meaning of it. See it's december 5th and starting december first people are not required to pay importing taxes or fees as long as the value of shipment is less than 150 Euros. Mine was 98 US. Sure, by this time it was too late to argue with the girl at the Post Office.

So I started to make some calls. First call was to the Customs Office and the information I received from was encouraging. They told me that Postal Office had no reason to charge me. Well that's pretty simple.

So now I called the central number for the Postal Office and this is where it gets funky. Their response was that - yes I was not obligated to make payment and I should have refused to pay. Telling them that in that case I would've walked out without my package made no difference. They told me that still... Post Office is not obligated to inform their clients about the changing laws.

So wait, this is wicked - I'm not obligated to pay and they're not obligated to tell me that I'm not supposed to pay and altogether nobody's obligated to do anything. Somehow I still ended up being ripped off in the middle of this everybody being nonobligatory.

This would be an excellent defense for armed robbery - " I was just asking, they could've said no. They were not obligated to hand over their valuables."

Gone are the good old days of Post Offices getting robbed in the Wild West, nowadays it's The Post Office that does the robbing.