Why You Should Never Send A Package to Spain
Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 9:00AM | 2 Comments Ok, well that's a bit dramatic, I guess.
But here's the story.
Before I left the US in January 2011, I knew I was going to be starting a job with horses once I got to Spain. I had no intention of carting all of my riding gear through Canada, Japan, Ireland and mainland Europe before I arrived in Spain so I pre-packed a box and asked my mom to send it to me when I gave her the green light.
In February, she sent the package which became held up in Spanish customs because they couldn't figure out what the declarative value was too high and they wanted me to pay taxes before shipping. The package was returned and my mom resent the contents in two separate packages, one with just my riding chaps (the most important part) express and the rest in a larger box putting the declarative value on both to be $50.
I received the big box with sun-dresses, some shoes, a couple pairs of socks, my riding boots and some yummy American candy my mom threw in for good measure. About two weeks later, I still hadn't heard anything about the box with the chaps in them. Then came a letter telling me that they couldn't figure out what the contents of the package were, so they were holding them in customs. The contents, of course, being a pair of custom made full-leg riding chaps, originally worth thousands of USD$ but now, being almost 15 years old, worth absolutely nothing to anyone other than me
These chaps are... very special to me. I rode in them every day since I was 11 and even had "grown up" gussets put in them when I put on my freshman 15 so they would still fit me. I love these chaps.
For the next 6 months, I sent e-mail after e-mail in broken Spanish to the customs office, the postal service, even the US embassy, trying to get the chaps forwarded on. To no avail.
The guy I had originally been in contact with at the customs office was fired and consequently, all of the minor progress we had seemed to have made was lost. I sent 4 or 5 e-mails and made 2 calls once I was back in the US with not one response. For three months I heard nothing.
Then. Out of the blue, last week, I got an e-mail from the customs office saying they were not going to mail the package on to me in Spain, but they would return it to the sender (which happens to be the address I am residing at right now) and yesterday at approximately 3:30 PM Central Standard Time, the USPS knocked on my door and presented me with the box.
I bet you can guess what was inside and what I did as soon as I broke into it. I put those bad babies on and danced around my living room.
One year and nine days after they were originally sent, my chaps arrived, back where they came from. Just in time for me to stick them in my suitcase and take them back to Spain with me. And by god, if I get stopped at customs...
I will take it as a sign and move to another country.
Moral of the story. If you want to send a package to Spain, just let it be known that there can be issues, and you will have to talk to someone at the office in Spanish if you have a problem - they don't speak English.
Reader Comments (2)
Nice chaps, i would love to go to Spain to ride.
They don't speak English at the Post Office in Spain and YOU don't speak Spanish while in Spain. Well...