Books

Books are an unbelievably expensive good in Iceland. The taxes on them are incredible! Being a student of literature this of course doesn't make my life any easy. After having spent a fortune on some of the books necessary for my courses I decided to start using the slower way of ordering them cheaply with Amazon and having them send over. Now I've ordered 7 second-hand books, none that was worth more than 5 USD and this is what happened:
- 2 of them were delivered without any problems to my house downtown Reykjavik
- 3 of them I had to pick up at the post office in my area and I had to pay 20 USD of taxes on them!!! -> but they were not delivered to my house
- now the last 2 of them were held at the storage of the national post in 110 Reykjavik (SUBURB!!! in the middle of nowhere!!!). So yesterday, after having waited a month, I asked Anna if she could drive me there to finally pick up my two books. Upon arrival they asked me to sign a paper so they could open the packages. 10min. waiting. They came back saying that they did not know the values of the book, whether I still had the bill.... my jaw dropped. The next 15min. I've spend searching my mailbox to find some receipt of my orderings. Luckily I found them, printed them out and handed over. 15min. of waiting. The 2 packages were handed over, another 20 USD of tax paid and I left after 45min to walk home for another 90min. as I didn't want Anna to wait for me for such a long time.

NOW: why 3 different procedures for 7 items that have the same value??? Nobody from the post office has been able to answer my question. What I learned from it? Don't order books from Amazon, it comes cheaper to buy them dearly in the shop and you save so much time!!!