I think I am going to start blogging more frequently with little tidbits because the pictures are turning out to take forever to upload. I thought the Duty Free experience was interesting enough to share.
As mentioned in the last post, we went perfume shopping at Chanel in Paris. (I did not buy anything on my backpackers budget but thoroughly enjoyed the experience with everybody else) The clerk quickly pointed out the sales were eligible for Duty Free treatment. They filled out the necessary paperwork for everybody, including the passport numbers of the buyers, and sent us of with instructions to scan the bar code at the airport (presumably as we left the country). Sure enough, there was a little kiosk in the international terminals (2E and 2F) that lets you scan the barcode and drop the pre-paid envelope in the mail.
Just out of curiosity, I checked the price in the Duty Free store in the airport. It was the same price as in the store, with no tax. That means they took your savings from avoiding the ~20% VAT tax and just marked it up by that much! The price to the consumer is the same, but you would be better off to have bought it on the street and turning in the paperwork to actually get the tax savings. If you buy at a vendor that knows what they're doing, like we did, then it literally took seconds to scan and mail after finding the kiosk.
No idea if this is true for the rest of the merchandise in the store. There must be some savings occasionally because the Duty Free store we passed on the way out of the terminal in Stavanger has random basic toiletry items since the tax on these is so high in Norway.
I'll still fill out the paperwork and get the refund when possible.
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