Have purchased books, and basically no problem. Customs duty calculated and payable on delivery. From memory delivery time from placing order was about 10 days.

Thanks for your reply Mike, could you give me an idea of the duties payable (10%??)

At that time it was reasonable (can't remember the %), however more recently a lot of the import duties have been reduced or removed. Anyway, not really a big issue.

thank God someone knew that! I was wondering how I would get books out here!

I'm curious what the process is to receive items like this? Does the post office send a card that items are to be picked up and the customs duty get paid when the items are collected?

just a note from personal experience: whether you receive items at all depends somewhat on where you live. I have lived at obscure addresses in the alleys where less than 50% of all mail I was expecting would arrive. Even local mail was returned to sender because the postman couldn't find my house.

From my experience, books I have ordered through Amazon etc. are not delivered through regular post, but usually USPS, Fedex, DHL etc (online vendors I have used provide a choice, of course costs are different for different delivery services).

Regarding difficulties in the deliveries of postal items, I have a particularly difficult address, so simply found out where our mail was delivered from and paid them a visit to introduce myself. These posties are an efficient and friendly lot, and after that absolutely no problems.