Cigars

I had trouble in the past with a vendor from Switzerland where I got hit with the £400 customs duty. I just put in an order with a different well-respected and recommended vendor and got this reply last night.

Before we process your order we would like you to read the below:

We would like to inform you we had temporarily suspended sending orders to England. We have to adhere to the Swiss Laws (guidelines) at this time and truthfully declare all our goods sent out for delivery

It had become a most tenuous situation recently, and specifically sending any orders to your country had regrettably become very difficult. England Customs had been charging outrageous amounts of duties and packages have continuously been returned to us or NOT AT ALL. It has taken months for us to receive our goods back or NOT AT ALL therefore we had to write them off as a loss. We have taken thousands of dollars of loss in the past few months thus forcing our hand in this situation to apply certain conditions to orders that England clients wish to place.

We are sorry we cannot service our England clientele any better, but England Customs is currently causing us to take this stand.

We will ship to England, ONLY under the below stated conditions. If you accept the conditions listed below then you must email me back acknowledging the fact and you must enter the comments of "ACCEPTING FULL RESPONSIBILITY" in your order form, and for all future orders you may wish to place.

We are forwarding you this email asking you to assume FULL RESPONSIBILITY for your order HR_20100914-5673A25C.

1) This would mean that we expect you to pay for any duties that you may incur with England Customs.

2) If they charge you an exorbitant amount of duty and you refuse the parcel, you are liable for 100 percent of the invoice.

3) If the package does not arrive for any reason (i.e England Customs) holding on to the order (seizure for any reason) we will not re-imburse or resend you the order.

Apparently customs is getting to be a bitch, at least with yellow packages from Switzerland. Before this year they were able to be a bit cagey about what they wrote on the customs declarations. Now they all clearly write cigars on it because of the Swiss law. Balls.

I cancelled the order. I've already lost one this year.