Back in February, I ordered a new euphonium in conjunction with a friend of mine, who happens to be in the music instrument business. He is also a euphonium player and ordered an instrument for his personal use. His instrument is configured slightly different than mine, but that's not the problem.
The Adams euph is hand-made in Holland and really sings. It's taken this long to have both of them built and shipped the U.S., where it encounters the jack-booted thugs under the Oministration.
http://www.adams-music.com/wf/instruments/euphonium/#.UlRqn9LktIE(It's actually amazing the bastards are working, what with the gubmint shutdown, but I digress...)
So my friend gets the word the horns are in Austin (one hour away from him and his store), so he goes down there to pick them up.
Well, you can't pick them up without paying import duty, of course, so he's also bringing a cashier's check to cover the cost for both instruments.
Unrelated to the jack-booted thugs, but nonetheless an irritant, is the fact that both instruments are identical -- per my specs, not my friend's. Wrong answer, so that's an issue for the Adams people. Apologies were apparently profuse along with the promise to have the correctly-configured horn to the same jack-booted thugs within a couple of weeks. Oh, joy.
Apparently the thugs' radar went off. They queried my friend about the intended use for these instruments. He told them the truth -- that one of them (his) was for personal use and the other (mine) was for sale. (This was before he discovered the manufacturer's screwup.)
They didn't believe him and apparently charged him some sort of ridiculous import tax because, in their peabrains, both horns were for sale. (Actually, one of the first two horns will go back to the manufacturer due to their mistake, so apparently there will be some adjustments that way -- I hope.)
Barry's tentacles reach deep, deep, into his bureaucracies. Those assholes could have accepted my friend's story, but no....they think everybody lies with the same fluency and capability as Barry does.
