http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1 ... 883C515855" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
If you have family living overseas who may consider sending gifts home via courier, here's a cautionary tale.
Heather Whittaker's daughter Linda, who lives in the UK, wanted to send her family a birthday present and Christmas gifts, and was forced to use a courier because of the Royal Mail postal strike which was under way at the time. (It was called off a month ago.)
The value of the parcel contents was £190 (about R2 300), and she paid DHL couriers to get it to Durban. But her parents were told they had to pay R803 in customs duty before they'd hand it over.
"Do you have to pay customs on a gift and, if so, why so much?" Whittaker asked Consumer Alert.
I took the matter up with DHL's South African head office, and was told by Nadine Lourens that all parcels coming into South Africa with a value higher than R500 attract "customs, VAT and duties".
"The amount is mostly for VAT, but about R290 is for duties, and then there is a R70 admin fee."
Essentially, if someone in the UK couriers you a parcel with a declared value of more than £40 (at the current exchange rate), you're going to have to pay - quite a lot - for your gift.
Lourens conceded that the DHL office in the UK should have warned Whittaker's daughter that there would "probably be charges" to be paid by her parents.
"But it is not easy to predetermine these charges as customs (department) has the authority to change these charges at their discretion," she said.
Interestingly, had that same parcel been sent to a state pensioner in South Africa, the recipient would have had to either part with 80 percent of their monthly pension or forfeit the gift.
