Last month I had ordered certain movies from Amazon and two of them were confisicated at the customs. Read here ‘Damn ! Customs has blocked my Amazon Order‘

Today out of the blue I receive a call from someone at the customs department, asking me to come over at cargo section near the Airport, regarding my order. I rushed down to the customs at cargo section. I was fairly surprised that the gentleman who called me, is one of the senior officials [presumably director] at the customs. Very courteous person, he asks me for the original airway bill for the package, which I didn’t have. So he rips off the airway bill sticker off the amazon box, and then he asked for my civil id. Then he asks me to take a seat and summons one of the guys working there to get a copy of the bill and my civil id. Five minutes later he checks more documents and then asks the same guy to take me over to another department head for clearance ! After that clearance I came back to this senior officials office, and then he guided me to downstairs to pay for import duties on my package. The import duties turn out to be KD 0.500/- only. After taking my import duty papers, the guy who made my import duties paper guides me to the Commercial Bank and tells me to pay for it. The commercial bank then took KD 2/- over KD 0.500/- as bank commission [what a rip off]. After paying for my duties, the import duty officer asks me to bring a stamp of KD 1.000/- from the machine. Total so far KD 3.500/- . After the import duty papers are finished the import duty officer guided me to Global Clearing House where I had to pay another KD 1.000/- With all this in hand the senior officer who called me met me downstairs, and said the office timings are over [it was 1 PM], and I should come back tomorrow to collect the package.

So I will be heading that way tomorrow to collect my DVDs’

Moral of the story:

1. I was fairly and pleasantly surprised by the courteousness of the all the government officers at the cargo customs
2. Their attitude towards guiding and helping is exemplary right from top level officials to other office workers
3. Commercial bank needs to amend commission policies [KD 2 for KD 0.500]
4. I had to pay KD 4.500 /- for releasing my DVDs which cost KD 12.000/-
5. What I failed to understand is the movie ‘Message’ was shown many times on MBC in Arabic over in Ramadan, so why is it black-listed