It seemed that he knew that the modest parcel in his hands was cause for minor celebration.

Parcels from the UK

A parcel through the post from the UK is a very rare occurrence these days. I tell family and friends that popping a wee pressie in the post is not advisable. The most likely outcome, I warn, is that it will be returned after a couple of months. Some people persist and get affronted when I laugh out loud when they claim that everything will be fine because they filled in a customs form at the post office in Britain. Laughing is the only appropriate reaction. Discovering the Portal de Desalfandegamento dos CTT is merely one of the many Kafkaesque benefits of Brexit.

Making it harder

While receiving goods is hard enough, using the portal to send goods out of the EU is even more difficult. The customs people naturally want a description of the goods being sent, but, instead of it being a proper description using old-fashioned things like words, it has to be a numerical code aligned to one of the twenty-five thousand items they have listed. Some of the items are very obscure, others just daft. (Note: I may have invented the number of items to choose from; there may be more.) It is your job to find out which code fits the goods you want to send. Good luck with that.


They don't require that on incoming goods but they do require paperwork you probably haven't got. What is extra annoying is that they usually want you to supply information that you haven't got but which they have. This information is usually contained in the form that the hapless sender filled in at the post office in Britain. You can't see this but they can. Nevertheless, you must duplicate it. The other kind of information they want might be in the form of a sales invoice, even if it is a present that you have been sent. No matter, you must still supply this information. Relevance is not a requirement.

Parcels that never arrived

Anyway, there was Senhor Luís on his postie's motorbike, grinning at me. I hefted the modest packet with some awe and noted that it wasn't too badly torn or battered, even after weeks in the hands of the orcs and that not a great deal of CTT sticky tape had been needed to repair it. I can't think what had come over me to even consider starting the process when I'd received the notification from the customs people. Normally, I just snort with derision and dismiss it but something made me go to the CTT Portal and have a look. I saw that over the previous couple of years, I'd been sent some twenty packages or so from the UK, though I'd only ever actually received one of them. For a couple of the others, I'd tried to wade through the process before giving up but all the rest I'd immediately abandoned to their fate, eventually to be returned to sender. Perhaps, on this occasion, it was simply that I didn't want to be beaten by silly forms, even if the whole apparent purpose of the silly form is to beat you. Regardless of the reason, I started the process and I thought I had done rather well; the machine seemed to accept my rather glib answers and cheeky screenshots in lieu of real invoices, blood samples or the ritual sacrifice of the firstborn. After less than an hour, I'd clicked off the site feeling rather pleased with myself.

Insufficient documents

A day or two later, I got an email from CTT Desalfandegamento informing me that the documents I had attached were insufficient. I put my creative hat on again and invented some paperwork and turned them into PDFs. The machine grumbled a bit but seemed to accept them. For a day, at any rate, then it moaned again. A third attempt seemed to finally assuage the gods of customs clearance and the webpage proceeded to take me to the next stage, which seemed to be little more than a confirmation of all the stuff I'd been doing over the previous week or two. I ticked all the boxes and felt quite smug.


A few days later, I got another email. Congratulations, it seemed to say. You have passed all the obstacles in the test, bar one: please proceed to the payments section. And there I was thinking I'd got away with a freebie. As if. Yes, there was the bill. The total cost of the goods in the package under debate came to around 40 euros. They now wanted nearly 10 euros import duty to be paid, plus about 20 euros 'service charge', so the total cost to be paid to CTT for the goods was basically a 75% surcharge. What's the word I'm looking for here - a word somewhat stronger than 'scam'? Perhaps 'tariff' will do.

Lesson learned

Anyway, I bade Senhor Luís a good afternoon and watched him putt-putt-putt off down the road while thinking to myself that I'd just paid for most of the fuel in his tank. Next time? There won't be a next time. I've finally learned my lesson.