[Sparkle]

What I find worrisome is that if customs are benefitting from seizing money, then there is an incentive to confiscate ALL cash that they can get away with, even money they know or suspect is legit. As they are gaining interest on these funds, there's the incentive to delay paying back the money for as long as possible.

This reminds me of my recent experience with customs. Back in December I placed an order for an item which was promtly dispatched from Brazil. The value I believe was around $400 Brazillian (about £150 worth), this was stated very clearly on the documentation accompanying the consignment. Anyhow, I was quite shocked to receive a customs charge of around £140 or so.

Turns out customs had based their "calculation" on a value of £400 sterling rather than 400 Brazilian. I phoned up customs, explained the error but was advised to simply pay the charge and claim it back. So I did. Filled in the claim form and sent it off before Christmas. End of January I received a letter asking if I was VAT registered, which clearly I'm not or I would've stated I was in the original form. I tried calling them again but it took me weeks to get through, I dialed their number around 40 times a day for a couple weeks or so and gave up (no facility to leave a message either, tut tut). I had tried sending a fax but it didn't seem to work properly as the tone would cut out early. I gave up trying to call them constantly and was considering taking legal action, as these people were seemingly unreachable by any other means. Then out of the blue, I tried the number again and amazingly I got through! I was quite ecstatic, and mentioned that I'd phoned many hundreds of times and was so pleased to finally have gotten through, this was greeted with silence from the woman on the other end, clearly not amused (as if it wasn't the first time she'd hear that said). She looked into my casefile and said a note read "fax received". She couldn't tell me anything other than someone must have received my fax and were dealing with it. I really didn't want to put the phone down, but I did reluctantly and hoped for the best.

I did receive my cheque in the post, full refund. Just a few weeks ago, and this is friggin' May for a claim I sent off in mid December !!
They've held on to my money, that they wrongfully claimed, for the best part of 6 months. I wonder how many other people have been through this tedious process.
I wouldn't be surprised if they're holding onto many millions, that they've wrongfully charged for, just to to cream off the interest.
But then again, nothing seems to surprise me these days.