ThinkGeek is made of win but South African Customs are a bunch of thieving bastards

ThinkGeek is made of win but South African Customs are a bunch of thieving bastards

Jan 08

So I bought a bunch of T-Shirts from ThinkGeek, smothered in awesome goodness. They weren’t cheap but it didn’t break the bank either. A T-Shirt is a T-Shirt (unless you’re one of those Ed Hardy wearing people, not awesome). After you add delivery to the order, them shirts start getting expensive but, you think to yourself, it’s ok, what’s a couple extra bucks for the geekly goodness? Right? Right.

Then, DHL phone you.

Did you know, for example, that one has to pay 45% import duty on a shirt. I, shit, you, not. I’m furious. Those filthy, back stabbing, thieving, cold hearted, communist bastards at customs are charging me 45% import duty on my order. To put it into perspective, including shipping, my total order for 7 T-Shirts came to R1505. I now need to cough up an EXTRA R827 for import duties and VAT because it’s a bunch of T-Shirts. For clothing, apparently, the government gang rapes one to, well, I’m not sure why. Possibly because they feel one needs to be gang raped as part of being a South African citizen to properly appreciate why one should buy local goods.

For the perspective part: I bought a Kindle and including shipping, VAT and estimated import duties, it came to R2700. Amazon then refunded me R500 from that which means the Kindle ended up costing only R2200 which is cheaper than the T-Shirts.

What kind of fuckery is this?

The gestation period of a llama is 11 1/2 months (350 days).