[Seizure] third one in two years. the pattern is the carrier, not the country.
Third letter. Same jurisdiction, same declared-value bracket, same carrier all three times. Nothing further happened on any of them — a letter, a note that the item was detained, and silence. I am not posting this as advice, because import rules are jurisdiction-specific and mine are not yours. I am posting the…
The carrier pattern is real and it is not mysterious. Different carriers have different customs brokerage arrangements and different thresholds at which they refer an item rather than clear it. You are not seeing a country policy, you are seeing a broker's risk appetite.
Which is why "research-use documentation" is not a magic word. It is a document that a broker may or may not be interested in, depending on their process.
this is the clearest explanation of the pattern i have read and it fits all three letters.
and the declared-value bracket matters for the same reason. under-declaring creates the problem it is trying to avoid, because a value that does not fit the contents is exactly what gets referred.
all three of mine were in the same bracket, which i had assumed was a safe one. apparently it is a referral one.
there is no safe bracket, there are only brackets that get looked at more. and nobody publishes the thresholds.