geeez... she'll often argue that she knows the value of dvds and can't get away with it even you under declare the package 
saw a lot of complaints on that post office in the newspaper! hope they would do something 
i heard also that they have targets (taxes and duty revenues) so they're relentless in appraising the goods
i've heard about that quota part. i had a horrendous experience with that very hag. i had 2 toys shipped to my office... these 2 toys were bought from ebay and were priced very cheap as they were less popular releases. the hag demanded 1600 from me, citing a bunch of numbers that she wrote down (but which i didn't understand anyway). the toys were declared at $10, but she calculated the taxes for $30. i didn't see the declared value at first, but when i finally pointed it out to her, she told me that she used the shipping rates along with the declared value to compute for duties... which was really stupid, because i know that i paid only $22 for the whole transaction, inclusive of ground shipping. she also did point out that the p500 was indeed a fixed charge, even advising me to bring in more stuff next time to maximize on this (yeah right).
i stayed for a while, hoping to reason with her as i only had 800+ with me that time, when a businessman tried to claim a taiwan trader's directory, which anybody can avail of for free by simply requesting from a website, and the customs hag asked him to pay p2000. she told him that they have fixed rates for those per country. the businessman, obviously peeved at that point and muttering invectives, simply asked to have the item returned to its sender. it was no great loss anyway.
the next people in line were two siblings who received a package from the uk. this contained - get this - 3 shirts and 2 trinkets (i really doubt that they were made of anything precious for the sender to ship them that way). it seemed to me that whoever sent those was an ofw and that they were gifts for the two (i have the impression that the sender was their mom for some reason). the customs appraiser then demanded almost 3000 in taxes! the older sister decided to call the sender through her cell because she was lost at what to do next. they eventually just decided to have the package shipped back, although they told the hag in such a way that they were visibly disappointed/pissed off, to which the hag nonchalantly said yes, with the air of brushing someone off as if she was doing it everyday (thinking about it, that was probably the case).
anyway, after about an hour, we bargained and arrived at p800 (me and my mouth... '800 lang po ang dala ko ngayon e...'). i did keep my cool throughout my ordeal... i don't think she would have lowered the fees otherwise. the irritating bit about this was that everything was legal, receipts and all... although the fact that her computations were flexible only made the whole thing more questionable. i think that if she was actually using a standard method to compute for fees then she wouldn't have arrived at 2 values. i also think that she was in fact working on a commission basis, giving her the authority to actually practice legal corruption. that's the part that sickens me most.
sorry for the length... i have posted this very story on different boards since the incident, and have avoided that post office since, although i really think that something should be done about this.
