The €43 Surprise: What Nobody Tells You About Getting Your Own Bag Back Into Europe
Here's a sentence that sounds like it shouldn't be true: you can leave your own suit and bag behind in India, have them shipped to your own address in Europe, and still get hit with an import duty bill — for recovering your own belongings. It happened to a traveller we worked with, delivering personal effects from Delhi to Spain. And the honest version of this story is more useful to you than the polished one, because it's the version that tells you what to actually expect. The recovery itself was the easy part Once the item was located at the Delhi airport lost property office and payment was processed, the shipment moved the way it's supposed to: FedEx AWB issued, an estimated delivery date shared upfront, a clean tracking link, status updates as it cleared through Madrid. No drama. This part of the process — collection, documentation, dispatch — is the part we've built to be boring, in the best way. Then Madrid customs asked a question nobody had thoug...