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SENDING items by post or an overseas shipping company to New Zealand is an everyday part of life. But before it is delivered the item has to beat Customs.
If that is not tough enough Customs world closely with Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Quarantine (MAF) staff.
While household goods and other goods sent by sea mail are inspected at the docks, thousands of postal parcels are checked every day at the Mangere International Mail Centre, near Auckland International Airport.
Brent Guthrie, a team leader for Customs postal operations says his workers get a feel for parcels that are not right.
"Work here for a while and you get an insight into another side of human nature," says Dave Mayers, who has been with Customs for 40 years.
Every piece of inbound and outbound air and sea mail passes through the centre, which is a secure, specially built clearing house opened three years ago and covering nearly a football field in area.
About 50 million pieces of mail come into the country in a year and nearly the same amount is sent overseas. Sniffer dogs help search for drugs, but a profiling system is the key to checking for imports that are illegal and undesirable.
"We look for tell-tale consignment addresses and countries of origin, forms of packaging, what's declared as contents, sometimes weight, little things which may betray what people don't want us to know," says Mr Guthrie.
"Items go on three moving belts where the search of inbound mail begins after it is unloaded from containers by postal workers.
Drug dogs roam the belts while customs officers pick through the passing array. Items of interest are set aside for possible closer examination in a secure area which is under continuous camera surveillance around the clock.
Mail which gets through the initial profiling on the belts is subjected to MAF x-rays plus an MAF dog's nose before reaching postal workers for sorting and nation-wide distribution.
How much mail is looked at in detail?
About 2 per cent of incoming mail is profiled for further examination, but not all is physically looked at.
Those items not opened go for x-ray by MAF officers.
"There are times when we both pick up items of interest to each other... it's a very good arrangement," says Mr Guthrie.
Illegal firearms may arrive whole or in parts.
Senior customs officer Stu Perry has become something of an expert on gun parts, although he is not specially trained - "just five years on the job [he has been in Customs for 20 years] and a lot of reference material so I can identify what's in front of me."
Mr Perry says the potential recipients are notified that Customs is holding the items and they are welcome to front up.
"If the individual is up to no good, they forget about it. We send them a reminder after a month, and if there's still no response we ultimately seize the item."
E-commerce and the ease of ordering products from overseas on the Internet is adding to the volume of mail which peaks to around seven million items in the month leading up to Christmas.
What a lot of people overlook when ordering by e-mail is that duty is payable on certain goods, especially clothing and footwear, which are very popular, and also GST.
One of the traps is ordering from an Australian company, says senior customs officer Eddie Hita, who is in charge of revenue collection.
Many goods on offer are made outside Australia, in China or Malaysia for example, and therefore are not exempt under the Australia-New Zealand free trade agreement.
"Trying to explain that to some people can be a little difficult," says Mr Hita, who has been with Customs for 18 years.
"They don't understand that having paid for them [by credit card] does not mean they're not liable for the payment of duties. Besides, anything that's valued in excess of $NZ400 is liable for GST anyway."
The $400 benchmark is quickly reached these days because of the fall in the value of the New Zealand dollar against the United States and Australian currencies used in most e-mail purchases.
A case in point is the importation of cigarettes. Many Asians do not like New Zealand cigarettes and import brands from their home countries, where cigarettes are very cheap.
But the duty has jumped to $51 a carton, which puts the cost of imports on a par with local cigarette prices.
Under the circumstances, Mr Hita and his staff are required to exercise "tact and amiability," as Mr Mayers puts it.
The heavier duty payments are adding to return-to-sender instructions, says Mr Hita.
"An increasing number of people are so shocked at the unexpected cost that they say 'send it back' and New Zealand Post obliges at the cheapest possible rate. The cost is charged to the sender.
"Others grin and bear it, but may think twice about future orders. Of course the overseas sellers don't generally warn Internet buyers of duties liable, although to be fair a lot of them wouldn't necessarily know," Mr Hita said.