Quote Originally Posted by ChinaV View Post
After 3 weeks of arguing, I finally relented and paid. ... There is no system, it's simply a lottery.

I no longer have anything shipped to China. Instead, I ship it to the country next door ...
I feel your pain.

You're lucky that Customs didn't assess the clothing as "used" (a forbidden item) and just seize it. Happened to me with a jacket I bought off eBay from a private vendor. It was a new jacket, but without tags. Nightmare.

Many years ago, while living back home in Canada, I bought some computer memory online from a shop in the USA. The memory chip was about $20. Duties & taxes were about $5, if I remember correctly, but the UPS charges were $18 for "international shipping" (going from Seattle to Vancouver), and a whopping flat-rate minimum of $49 for "brokerage fees." Learned my lesson and rented a postal box in Blaine, WA (on the border, and only a 30 minute drive from my house).

Last time I was in HK, I inquired about getting a shipping address at something like a Mailbox Etc. but was told there are no longer any such services. I'd love to learn of some way to get a shipping address in HK.