Arrivals forms or customs agents may ask if you packed your own bags. Must I pack them myself or is it OK to answer in the negative to this question?

In New Zealand, the MAF ask this question on the form. It is to get a written conformation that you packed it so you are liable for a $400 fine if you forgot to declare even one apple. What if you say ‘No’ and your mother helped you since you were getting late for the airport and were in the shower?
It’s not a crime for family helping you to pack.

Say ‘no’ and avoid the liability of mistaken, forgetfully undeclared items especially when travelling for 26-30 hours.
They want to make money over your fading memories. It’s a sad money making racket by biosecurity of New Zealand and Australia.
All they could do is check the bags and throw away the items. But since it’s not possible to check so many bags per hour so they ask you the question of what you got just to avoid their time and staffing.
So to save their labour we pay the fine. How does that work?

I have seen it in customs and assumed that it is about smuggling of illegal goods. I seem to recall that people have been carrying bags they received from new acquaintances and they turned out to be full of drugs.

I have always taken this question not literally as ‘did you physically put all the things in yourself, by yourself’ but more as ‘Is this a bag you packed for your self with your stuff, or is this a bag you are carrying for someone (non-travelling) else.’

Also note that usually checkin agents, TSA, customs, immigrations treat a family as a unit, so if ‘you’ in this case means the family travelling together to me.

I don’t think you want to answer no – but you shouldn’t be carrying stuff for other people without inspecting and knowing precisely what it is either.

I’ve said “no” in the past. I’ve been on a guys’ trip to the Canary Islands, and was carrying some boots for one of the others guys, didn’t even think about it until I saw the form. However, I simply answered honestly, they questioned my response, I explained, and they were fine with it. Didn’t even ask to see the boots.

So no, you don’t have to pack all your own stuff, and it’s not illegal to carry something for someone else, however, the more you do this, the more risk there is of ‘unknown items’ being onboard the flight (from the airline’s / TSA’s perspective) – and for all they know, they could be diseased, drugs, explosives or worse. So odds are good that if you answer ‘no’, you can expect further questions, and it’s smart practice to know exactly what is in your bag, and whether it’s legal to transport to your destination.

That question is common when you’re checking in to a flight, because they’re worried about bombs being smuggled on board. (The Hindawi affair is the most notorious case of this actually happening.) The question is asked by airline check-in staff, not Immigration/Customs. If you do answer “No”, the bag will be thoroughly searched, but you’re free to proceed once they conclude it’s harmless. Here’s a thread on PPRuNe about this.

That said, I’ve never heard of it being asked at Immigration (they couldn’t care less what’s in your bags), and neither can I imagine Customs at the destination asking, unless you’ve already aroused some serious suspicion, they’re about to open your bag, and they’re giving you a last chance to blame someone else for the 5 kg of heroin they’re about to find strapped to your suitcase lining.

Can we name names here and state the countries that supposedly ask this?

While I’ve never seen this on a customs form, or been asked this at customs, it used to be super popular at checkin. I never lie, so this would happen:

Did you pack your bags yourself? Yes.

And then

Have the bags been out of your sight or control since you packed them? Yes, I left them at the hotel bag drop all day, or the conference bag drop all day, or they were in the trunk of the cab all the way to the airport.

Nothing ever happened to me from saying Yes that way. In fact, the question got way more complicated after a while (Have these bags been out of your sight and control in a public place or somewhere unsupervised?) before they just stopped asking it.

I have seen, on Border Security, that this question gets asked in by customs and immigration in secondary inspection. (Secondary is not the booths you line up to show your passport, but the room off to the side that only a few passengers are sent to.) Once they’ve decided to look through your bags, they may ask, in a super bored “just a routine question” voice: “Is this your bag? Did you pack it yourself? Are you aware of all its contents?” Then when they find something, people often say “What is that? I didn’t put that in there!” and the agents are like “you told me you packed your own bag. Were you lying? Who packed this bag?” – it seems like it’s a strategy to either forestall the “I didn’t put that there” defense or to get you upset enough that you will tell them who you’re carrying contraband for. I don’t get the feeling it’s a screening question, it’s a question they ask once they decide to search you.

If someone asks “did you pack this bag yourself” do not EVER just say “No”. Say “my girlfriend put all the clothes in for both of us” or “my mother is really good at filling suitcases so she put everything in after I chose what I was taking” or “the two of us did the packing”. Just saying No sounds to the customs guy like “this guy I met a while ago stopped off with a full suitcase I never bothered looking in” and you might guess that’s not a smart thing to do.

Don’t lie though. There is nothing wrong with carrying something for somebody else if you know what it is and it’s legal to carry. There is a ton wrong with lying even if the thing you’re lying about isn’t wrong. And these people, their whole job is spotting that you’re lying. Don’t even bother.

If you answer “No” it’s generally a big flag to Customs that you are either carrying something you are not supposed to, or that you may be trying to import something. You are responsible for the items you take through Customs.

It’s not illegal to carry something somebody else packed, just very un-wise unless you are 100% sure of the contents.