Our parcel force bloke came in to work today to pick some stuff up, he is there everyday so we know him quite well. NYSoul and me fired some questions at him about why everyone is all of a sudden getting stung.
He said they are clamping down, the old "Gift" thing don't work anymore so don't even bother. He said they are not really interested in the codes either so if you got codes for tax free stuff don't bother with that either.
They are looking for the value, he said its hard for stuff to go missing from the states due to the ammount of procedures they have in place that track it at every stage.
Said our best bet was to get the yanks to lie about the value of the item on the ticket and risk it.
He thinks we will get stung more often than not now
After listening to what he said, my advice would be (if you can get the sender to do it)
Mark the item down as low as you think you can get away with.
Get a track number, follow it and just take the risk.
and if you are sending stuff the other way, i find writing stuff like "Caution contains photos of young Brazilian boys please do not bend" gives me that little feeling of getting your own back