Super high import duties for online shopping from overseas while living in the Philippines (with UPS)

Please don't get me wrong: I may be lamenting about certain things I have experienced during my life in the Philippines. But of course there are also countless delightful experiences, which fully weigh up the negative ones. And the positive experiences unfortunately often don't make it into my blog. Perhaps I should revisit my blogging strategy. 😐 I know that I am a guest in this beautiful country, and I don't want to appear as an ungrateful guest. When it comes down to personal interactions, it's always a delight in the Philippines. But when it comes to the system, impersonal rules followed by employees or officers anonymously, it sometimes leads to upsetting results.

In July 2019, my wife has purchased baby clothes from an online shop in Sweden. 2 parcels, each one the size of a shoe box, were shipped through UPS Expedited (apparently a mistake to ship with UPS). These are the invoices issued by the online shop:

Parcel #1 (EUR 184.91 = P10,667):

 

 Parcel #2 (EUR 177.65 = P10,248):

When UPS delivered these parcels, we were asked to pay import duties, handling fees, value added taxes, stamp duties, disbursement fee and brokerage fees, amounting to the following:

Fees for parcel #1: P4,397
Fees for parcel #2: P4,274

Putting the shipping costs aside, the additional (undeclared on the invoice) charges due upon receipt amounted to more than 43% of the merchandise value! Horrendously expensive! We double-checked with UPS and got the detailed calculation. And UPS is claiming that the calculation and billing is correct. It's difficult for me as a customer to validate the correctness of their calculation, because I haven't found the import law of the Philippines online. So at the moment I am not yet able to verify the correctness.
For me, the conclusion is:

• It's dangerous to order stuff from abroad if you live in the Philippines. You might get slapped with horrendous charges upon receipt.
• Don't use UPS as your courier service
• The Bureau of Customs is not transparently making the law available on the internet. Which leaves the door open to all courier services to charge arbitrary fees and get away with it.

If anybody is curious about the exact details:

Parcel #1:

Parcel #2: