WARNING for those here with Brasilian wives, family or friends

Since we have a little group here....I am sure that you'll want to send a small gift to your mother's in law or whatever from time to time.....

Well.....this is the third time that I have had an company branch office/company employee/or subcontractor of a major international courier firm working in Brasil try to trick my recipient in to unknowingly pay duties and taxes on an item that I sent to them in Brasil....upon which the government website says that no duties or taxes shall be levied.

It's happened twice with DHL and just this week with FEDEX.

In all three cases the delivery driver/office staff at their end have requested cash payment of up to R$75-100 ($25-35 USD) for "duties and taxes" on gifts under $50 USD that have been sent via these courier firms. Scamming little b*****ds.........

In the case of the two incidents with DHL, we refused payment and told the driver to keep the items upon which he said....."OK go ahead, you can take them".....and in this case with FEDEX we have done the same after complaining to their offices here and providing evidence of our position being correct......FEDEX here has done nothing and really could care less it seems and won't release the package. FWIW....this has never happened with documents for obvious reasons.

Anyways.....this kind of stuff is typical in Brasil in other forms of trade and I am not surprised that it has spread to this business. Fortunately, we don't send things that we cannot afford to lose so it's not the end of the world.....but it is a bloody pain in the *** !!