Monday, November 16, 2009

Ja.is

Just put myself in the Icelandic phonebook with my mobile number and e-mail and my profession: climber
Check out ja.is and send me a text :)

Icelandic Post

Welcome back.
There has been so much going on in the last months that I decided to take a blog-break.
But, now that I'll be traveling a lot, I'll be back here again.
As Icelanders don't complain too much about the rules, I decided to complain. (Great)
I ordered some books from Bol.com for my book about climbing.
Paid, including Dutch taxes, or "BTW" and paid for the sending to Iceland.
Received some books in the last weeks, but not all. I got a message that some books had arrived and had to pick them up at the post-office (I paid for home-sending of the books, not post-office sending)
For one package I suddenly had to pay toll. The other package (with the same amount of books) was toll-free. The previous packages also have been toll-free.
So, I asked, why do I have to pay toll over this sending. The lady (of the post office, so not of the toll) answered...
"Well, you've been lucky with the previous sendings. They pick out packages and sometimes you pay, and sometimes you don't have to pay. It depends also a bit on which toll employee you have, some are nice, some are very strict." I was surprised by her honest answer and remembered my sending with iceaxes, which got me over 1000 Euro's in toll.
I paid the toll, as discussion wouldn't really help.
I asked how to avoid the toll. She told me: "Well, best is to send the package to friends or family abroad, for example when you buy things from e-Bay. Then they can put it in a box and sent it to you as private sending. The toll doesn't check very often private sendings."
I told her, 'waauw, that is actually quite corrupt' and I smiled and walked with the package.
Actually I was just angry, so if I understand it right it's a gamble to pay toll or not, or you have to have friends working at the toll.
Sometimes I really think Iceland is a Third-World-Country...