Kevin and I then had an early start to make the following day to collect the package from the post office, having been reassured with the message that we must now pay the custom agents fees (which presumably suggested that their work was complete) and be in their office the following morning at 8am. We therefore had a 6.30am alarm call and a departure in darkness on Thursday morning heading for Santa Cruz. We optimistically told Jill and Phil to make themselves comfortable, that we would be back at 11am and heading off to La Gomera for that evening.
Artificial lake in the centre of Santa Cruz
Of course, when we arrived at the customs agent office at 8am, they looked at us only half interestedly. We provided a name and someone gave us a vague acknowledgement then the three of them seemed to just carry on with their work. Twenty minutes later papers were proudly offered with the customs stamp in place and a bill for import tax beside it. Excellent, we had managed to talk directly to customs only two days before and agree that there would be no import duty required. We payed for the professional services of this compulsory customs agent (50 Euros) to complete the required form to this affect and he manages to gain us a bill for import duty too. We complained but his response was only that the customs people told him that we did need to pay duty. Quick calculation however says that the cost of querying this - further delay, rehiring a car to no doubt still end up paying the tax, customs not being famous for about turns seemed to about balance the cost of paying it. It also meant that our guests who we’d been waiting in Tenerife for 3 weeks for would not spend their entire week’s holiday sat in the marina waiting for us to return from Santa Cruz. So we paid up, no doubt this was the logic which they knew we would make and justified the inappropriate charge. We received the triplicate paperwork and the stamped post office sheet to allow us to collect. Apparently the fact the parcel was addressed to our marina not to a sorting office in Santa Cruz would not induce the post office to actually complete the delivery.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife
We left the office rather down hearted at being ripped off and counting the cost of our new storm sail. Murphy’s law will hopefully now mean that it never gets used, in which case it will have been money well spent. Ten minutes later we were searching for some breakfast when my mobile rang and the customs agent entreated us to come back to the office because our invoice was “bad”. Kevin was convinced this was ply for more fees and was closely guarding the stamped post office docket. We arrived back to the office to receive a 40 Euro refund, no real explanation, our only assumption was that we’d been overcharged and that as we had shown that we were not adverse to going directly to customs ourselves they’d thought better of it.
Artificial lake in the centre of Santa Cruz
We returned to the boat via the supermarket and it was by now 1pm, we had decided it was too late to start a crossing to La Gomera now, so we bought fresh prawns for lunch which was consolation enough for Phil I think.
Jill and Phil seemed happy enough playing cards on the back of the boat with a beer when we arrived. So we made lunch and had a relaxed lunch and afternoon before heading to the Happy Hour bar. Jill and Phil had definitely brought good weather with them as the wind had dropped almost completely when they came. The sight of the surf leaping as high as the glass wall round the bar the week before was now replaced by gentle lapping waves. I am sure they wondered what we were complaining about.
Jill on board
No comments:
Post a Comment