Big Mikey, you've just described exactly our problem. Unpredictable! People (understandably) complain that we don't say how much duties will be. But the fact is that US customs in particular are just incredibly inconsistent. Sometimes they'll go by the letter of the law by its most stringent interpretation; then often other times things just glide through. And for whatever people say about particular shippers, there's no obvious pattern. It's not just which port of entry, but what day of the week, it seems. Our lives would be so much easier if they had single consistent set of rules that we could at least predict!