Morning all,

this is something that's happened twice to me in the last week, I have been in Switzerland for over 3 and half years now and not encountered this before. Recently I have bought some stuff over the Internet from abroad (1 x Germany, 1 x China). For the item from Germany which arrived a couple of weeks ago I just received a letter from Swiss Post Logistics which is an invoice for VAT being CHF 13 in this case and another item noted as "Zollabfertigung" (Customs Handling) at CHF 33. This is for an item that cost about CHF80. Now today I collected an item from the post office and had to pay another one of these charges on the item from China. Same story, VAT which is CHF 18.6 in this case and another bloody Zollabfertigung charge, this time for CHF 35.

I have bought plenty of stuff over the internet since we've been here and these two instances are the first where I've had to pay this customs charges - have I been lucky in the past or have they recently changed the system to introduce this nice little stealth tax? I think the "pauschal" charge here is ridiculous and I'll be doing a little more personal importation in future if this is here to stay.

Any comments? Is this a new system?

Cheers