I occasionally watch these ‘customs’ docusoaps on TV where they send drug sniffer dogs into airports and cut open children’s books to find stashes of cocaine in the cover. It’s all fascinating stuff, and it’s amazing to see what people try and get away with.

I’ve always wondered however, what happens if they get it wrong? What if they cut up an expensive camera only to find it filled with the usual set of electronics, or deface a child’s toy to find it completely empty or harbouring a little sand from the beach?

Today I found out, they just put the pieces back in the box and deliver it. A friend returned a USB 3G modem and cable from Australia by post. Thankfully the modem survived, but the cable is unusable:

There were no stickers on the package, no apology, no £5 cheque for a replacement cable, just a broken cable and bits of surgically removed plastic! I don’t know if it was done by UK or Australian customs, I don’t know why, they didn’t even bother to properly reseal the package, it was just stuck down with the same glue Jen used to package it to start with and dropped through my letterbox by the postman.

I hope this doesn’t happen too often, think of those children opening a stuffed bunny birthday present only to find it had been decapitated by some overzealous customs official.

Thank you whoever you are, for not cutting up the modem and various other things I have posted from abroad. Next time, a little post-it with a handwritten ‘Sorry’ would have been enough for something of this value. At least that way I’d accept it’s part of your job to destroy other people’s things.