Returning back to the hotel from seeing Justin and Emma last night, we were handed a letter from Fedex. Our initial excitement at thinking this meant our parcel had arrived quickly faded. Inside was an invoice in English and another letter in Turkish. Even with no real knowledge of Turkish it was obvious that it was a customs demand. It looked like we would have to pay again to get our parcel delivered. Putting it aside, we decided to worry about it in the morning.
Phoning the couriers in the morning it became clear that we would have to go and collect the parcel from them and pay 150YTL (£64) to get the parcel released. For some reason Parcelforce had put a value of £200 on the items for insurance purposes, even though my sister had put the value as zero.
Unhappy about the situation, but aware we still needed the contents we decided we would have to bite the bullet and pay. The next problem was how to get to the depot.
Looking on google maps, the address we had been given seemed to come up as three different destinations, none of them close. Ahmed, our hotelier proved very little help here, although in a city as big as Istanbul you can't know everywhere! Fortunately, bearing in mind our fortunes with other countries tourist information offices, the girl in the tourist office was most helpful.
With a map and some written instructions in hand, we embarked on a very long and very overcrowded tram journey. It was on one of these overcrowded trams, while we were separated, that Debs had her backside grabbed. This is the second time in two trips to Istanbul that such a thing has happened and it is about time it stopped! The tram was then followed by a long and not inexpensive taxi ride. The tone was set for the day.
With the help of the staff in a nearby bank we were directed to the courier depot, where it all started to go wrong.
Thinking that we would just pay our 150 Lira, take our parcel and leave, turned out to be a mistake. The 150 Lira was just the start, there had been no prior mention that we would also have to go to the airport to pay customs another 125 Lira. Putting aside the fact that the airport and back would have cost 40 Lira by taxi. The final kick in the teeth was being told that there would be a warehouse charge of 100 Lira as well.
Looking at a bill, excluding our transport costs, of approximately £160 for a parcel worth £30 left us with no choice but to treat the goods as abandoned. It looks like I have yet another cash card to cancel, at least I know what happened to this one!
My usually cheery disposition had been fading fast and its fair to say that it ended entirely when I discovered that I had lost our phone somewhere on our travels. It is only fortunate that Debs tram incident didn't occur on the journey back as I may well have started a fight in the tram.
Some days it is probably best just to stay in bed, this was definitely one of them. Never have we been so glad to get back to the hotel.
Neither of us had a lot of enthusiasm to start packing our gear up. So as a way of putting the day behind us, we have decided to stay one more night and hopefully leave Istanbul on a better note.
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