A few days ago I fell for a reader offer in the NYRB. Go to their website, log in and make the purchase without any bother.
Then today, I get a text message from Royal Mail telling me that there are some customs dues to be paid and please go to some place with a long name to pay them. No payment, no delivery. A message which is not all that much use on my telephone as I do not make payments from my telephone.
Transcribe the long name to my laptop, get it right on the second attempt, and find myself somewhere in the world of Royal Mail suggesting that I pay X pounds for customs charges and another X pounds for handling charges. A significant upgrade to the purchase price.
The good news is that it lets me do this with PayPal. The bad news is that somewhere along the way it has enabled automatic logon to PayPal from gmail, which I do not want at all. Very insecure. So another few minutes spent while I learn how to re-disable this automatic logon.
All of which will no doubt become much more familiar when we leave the European Customs Union and customs become payable on what are now more or less trivial transactions with foreigners - although that said, I do not actually have that many foreign transactions. Which is perhaps just as well.
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