About 3-4 years ago I bought 4 basses from Ishibashi. They shipped them in their original triangular shipping cartons, 4 boxes in all. On each of them there was an invoice for all 4 basses, so of course I was charged VAT and duty on the cost of 16 basses instead of 4. Which was rather a lot of money.
Parcelforce wouldn't release the parcels until I'd paid the tax, or even let me see the parcel or the attached invoice, so I paid up and wrote off to customs to explain what had happened.
To give them their dues they didn't take long to issue a refund to me.
If they had been shipped with UPS or Fedex I'm pretty sure I'd have been able to sort things out with the courier.