Customs Rip-offs

I have been away from the board for a while and was disturbed on my return to read about visitors being held up (no pun intended) by Customs Officials demanding bribes.

On my visits I have not experienced any problems and was wondering if this is primarily happening to people who are not travelling as part of a tour or vacation package. We have always travelled with Air Transat Holidays.

Does anyone know if the 'victims' of the Customs are travelling on their own?

If you read down below, there was an entire thread on this situation. It is a fact that customs officials continue to ripp off passengers, but mostly Dominicans, who are suckers for this type of treatment and prefer to pay rather than make themselves heard. And our own people may be at fault sometimes for attracting this kind of abuse, because in essence they load up on too much luggage weight and sometimes use a regular trip to bring merchandise for sale. So customs officials knowing this weakness, pray on Dominicans who carry lots of luggage and even try to hide things. I have never been bothered or even checked at a customs counter because I always travel with carry-on luggage and very light. I wonder when people are going to learn that with globalization, anything you can find there you can find here and anything you can find here you can find there, so why all this luggage. As far as I am concerned, maybe this is a good thing. It might help to control these people who delay flights carrying twenty pieces of luggage.

I sent a e mail to aa and this is what they had to say. Dear Mr.

We've received your e-mail message and can appreciate
the reasons

for your concern. I have shared your comments with our
Manager in

Santo Domingo for review. Thank you for writing and
giving us an

opportunity to look into this matter.

We hope to have the privilege of welcoming you aboard
soon.

Just to let you know, if you simply 'reply' to this
message, it may

delay our response to you. Please use our e-mail link
on aa.com.

Regards,

Susan Henry

Customer Relations

American Airlines

When we arrived at Puerto Plata airport about three weeks ago with four girls customs wanted us to open all our suitcases. One of my friends smiled very friendly to this guy and "laughed" about his jokes. She didn't have to open her suitcase. I brought cheese in my handluggage (which I'm not supposed to import into the country), so when she put my handluggage on the counter I told her to JUST give the suitcases. So when I wanted to take our car with handluggage the guy got kind of upset. When my friend said "no, no .. it's mine .." it wasn't a problem anymore.

The guy asked one of my other friends what her name was. She told him that is was really not important. So that sure didn't work for her. She had to open her suitcase as well and he really took EVERYTHING out .. all her personal stuff, all her underwear. He was making "fun" of her, showed her g-strings to the other guys. Well .. not very funny, but what can you do ???

I guess all you can do .. if you're a girl and these guys start flirting .. just use your "charmes", smile a lot and laugh .. that might be the best way to get through!

So far our story!

Alexandra

Hey Alexandra Peek, does that mean the customs agent can take a "peek" under your panties too? You better watch out, we have some feminists on this board who may object to your sex object tactics.

... can handle possible feminists on this board ;-)

By the way .. it's pretty commom all over the world (and also not too bad) for women to use their "charmes" if necessary and helpful.

Too bad for all the men who just can't deal with that : LOL!

Adios amigo,

Alexandra

P.S. Didn't mean to offend anybody!

Offended? Yeah right, people should take lessons from you. I tried for over 2 months to get a phone in the house, it took my wife one day. I tried for 5 months to get an Edenorte contract, it took my wife 3 hours. My neighbor tried for one month to get a garbage contract for our community, it took my wife less than 1/2 hour.

Now we are trying to get an INAPA contract and negotiate a rate for filling our pool. hehe...GUESS WHO WE'RE GOING TO SEND!!! The most painful part of the whole story is that she speaks less spanish than me and my neighbor!!

Sorry to hear about your airport experience. That's really ****ty.

marc