Paphos Life

I'm wondering if it is possible to complain about difficulty in either sending or non delivery of a parcel sent from abroad?
I had extreme difficulty sending a small Christmas present to my sister in Australia. The post mistress told me I must complete an on line form. On the PO tablet, I downloaded a 4 page form. Clearly it was designed for a business to use. Not an individual citizen. Two hours later, and with-her help, it would not approve this. Because I had no details of my non existant business,
So, I bought the correct stamps and had to post it else where.
It in fact arrived safely..
Her gift to me arrived in Cyprus safely.
Was sent to Nicosia, where it languished for approx 1 month. I did receive an email in Greek,which I deduced wanted all my details,inc my VAT no. The local post office told me to ignore that.
Eventually, it has arrived in Paphos. I collected my beautifully wrapped small gift (an Apron would you believe, today!
The parcel was in a sturdy jiffy bag, with all details of contents on it. It came by air mail,
I tried to ring the Post Office consumer line. (80002000) as instructed.
When I got through, the woman who answered, would not speak to me regarding my obvious question.What happened to delay my Christmas Parcel?

Has anyone any experience of these problems with sending a small, low cost parcel abroad? Or receiving one? In fact has anyone managed to do this? I seldom see anyone these days in a post office which used to-be busy. Specially at Christmas.

Hi
Received five christmas cards today.....all posted around dec 4th..from UK.

I received two Christmas card last week. The sender was here staying with me for a week and saw me get the cards out of the post box

Letter post isn't the same problem. That tends to languish in sacks either at Larnaca Airport waiting for collection to Limassol, then Paphos.

It's parcels even jiffybag which are small ones. There seems to be an obsession to force people to fill in a lengthy form giving their business address, VAT no etc. As well as their own address. But this seems to apply to everyone, even private individuals. It seems grossly unfair the likely reason is to force one to pay VAT, customs duty etc. Even on a gift,. Ditto when you're receiving an overseas parcel itsdelayed pending their wish to try to extract payment before you can see it.

We've decided to wait until I'm in the UK where sending/receiving an overseas parcel is not difficult. But I feel the current situation here should be looked at and changed,

When sending a package/ parcel abroad we just fill in the on line form....no mention of Business name, VAT no required...takes 5 mins, we then get a number to give to post office when posting. Take it to p.o. where weight is checked, stamps paid for and left with p.o. ...
It's a pain but not that difficult once you know the system....
As for receiving a package from abroad, if it's from the EU, then it just gets delivered...
But if from a third world country is UK ,then yes have to pay Customs charge and VAT ....
Although now and again a package gets delivered directly with no Customs or VAT

Back when I was importing goods for my business, the producers would ask me if i wanted them to put gift or samples on the package so i could avoid paying fees etc , it looks like the Cypriots have wised up, on this.

Not only that, but anything under 18 euros used to be tax free. But people took the piss, and everything was under 18 euros. So they stopped that.

We get what we deserve.

Hi daveg,
Thanks for your reply.Are you talking about actually sending a parcel abroad while in Cyprus?
If there is a different form for those of us sending a gift to a friend or relative abroad from CY where do you find it? The post mistress in my local PO only knew about the complicated 4page form which I tried to describe in my initial post.
As the PO website wouldn't accept a private individual, I ended up just buying the correct postage and posting it outside the town. But this isn't ideal and might not work another time!