Have had a love letter from UK border force a while ago. Now travelling on me holidays via channel tunnel. With the new exit checks has anyone gone through these since receiving a letter? Did you get any closer scrutiny?
Travelling after love letter.
Have had a love letter from UK border force a while ago. Now travelling on me holidays via channel tunnel. With the new exit checks has anyone gone through these since receiving a letter? Did you get any closer scrutiny?
[1 Points] None:
[1 Points] dn2016:
Cheers all. I too think I'll be ok but could do without the hassle (and the moaning from the missus if we get searched!)
[1 Points] IsItFUD-MerckKGaA:
I can't help you on the topic of what will happen. But chances are they don't check your passport at all at Folkstone. The British side that is. If you are traveling with a UK numberplate the French will check your passports but usually they don't scan them. They just count them (people in car vs. number of passports, that is my experience for EU passports, never had a non EU person with me and I never got stopped by the French with a numberplate from the continent). If you arrive directly after your letter (A,B,C,D) has been allowed for boarding at the check in there is a good chance you will be in a group of cars that gets a routine wipe down. One security guy (they are neither border force nor police, more like the people at the airport that check your luggage) will walk around the row of cars wearing cotton gloves and wiping all the door handles (all cars get checked at the same time). A second guy will walk from driver to driver and swipe your steering wheel. Again one swap for all the cars. While he is doing that he will be asking you if it is your car (just say yes, don't explain that it is your uncles or whatever even when it is. Won't make a difference anyway and he is only interested in how calm you are). About 3 minutes later you all will be allowed to drive back to the queue. I don't know if they are testing for drugs or explosives, maybe both. But whenever I came with the first flush and not last minute for my boarding letter I got pulled in the testing queue (male in business clothing and non cheap car). After the first time I made sure to wipe everything down with wet wipes multiple times. Might just be paranoia. I don' know what happens if their test comes up positive. But I assume they will then test each car separately. I am just explaining this so no one freaks if they look closer. All cars are on the same swipes, might not be because of you.
Now getting into the UK is a whole different story and you will have more fun at Calais, again the French don't care. I am a EU citizen, non British non permanent UK resident status. I have been quizzed for up to 10minutes even when there were gigantic queues. So were people in cars with UK numberplates of which I assume that they also have UK passports. Quizzing was mostly about were I am traveling from, to and why, whose car it is, how long I plan to stay and so forth. I am polite but the answer to all those questions should actually be go fuck yourself you have no legal right from stopping me entering the country. They will ask nearly the same questions again and again. It is rather pointless, even if you are making a story up you shouldn't be so daft and changing it just because the question is phrased differently or the question is only implied. So if you are traveling from Amsterdam either tell them straight or make the story fit and stick to it. No chemical tests on this side ever (don't blame me if there are). But there are always dogs around. Although I think it is fairly certain that those are trained to find illegals not stuff. Source?= I have driven through the channel tunnel more then a 100 times for legitimate business and the fact that they did never say or ask about that suggests that the passport scanning by the British on entering the UK does only lead to a thumbs up or down nothing detailed.
TL;DR everybody gets some scrutiny and it seems to be mostly a psychological check. So if you do something illicit you can't be scared and do not have traces on door handles or steering wheel when leaving the UK.
I am pretty sure a love letter won't affect you traveling abroad. If no further action has been taken by the border force against you then I don't see a reason why you would be scrutinized in customs.
Remember, the package was sent to you and you have no idea where it came from if the border force find it.