My sister had ordered a Nexus 4 8GB from the USA Google Play store and had it sent to her Youshop address. She declared it at a value of $299 USD (I remember reading on here somewhere that a Youshop representative said you only declare the value of the parcel, not including the domestic shipping used to get the parcel to Youshop).

So her package arrives in New Zealand but gets stopped by customs with details on her package being declared at $358 USD (??) and shipping at $20.66 USD (??) with a total value of $437 NZD. It seems they had converted the value twice, seeing as $299 USD -> NZD = $358~. They also stated the Youshop shipping fee in USD. This results in a tax of $108~.

My sister then goes into a customs office with proof of purchase etc to try and sort out this issue. She was told that because she was charged $387.55 (Phone + domestic shipping) on her bank statement, they have to use that value when taking into consideration of tax (even though she had the Google Play receipt which clearly states the phone was only $299 USD) and thus, $387.55 + $20.66 = $408.21 meaning she still gets taxed.

Part of that $387.55 on her bank statement was a $9.46 currency conversion fee (says incl. Currency conversion fee of $9.46 as a transaction comment) and I'm pretty sure that already gets taxed with the bank. Are customs even allowed to charge tax on that fee? Doing so would result in that being taxed twice. If they're not, the total cost would be $378.09 + 20.66 = $398.75 meaning no tax.

They kept telling her that "because $387.55 appears on your bank statement, that is the value we have to use!" and made her pay anyway.

Also, are customs allowed to charge tax on domestic USA shipping services to get the parcel to Youshop? Their reasoning was "If you didn't pay for that shipping, you wouldn't have been able to get it into NZ anyway".

Anyone able to offer any advice on what to do? Seeing as she already paid, the best outcome would be a refund.