A man who claimed a Christmas gift was slashed by a Customs officer has demanded changes to import inspections.

Roland Tear said he picked up a package from ZipX on Tuesday morning and found that the contents – a comforter – had been cut.

He added it appeared someone had used a box cutter to slash through the tape that sealed the package and the blade had sliced into the comforter.

Mr Tear said: “I paid a lot of money for this. It was a Christmas gift.

“This is not the first time this has happened to me. Every one of my packages has been opened.

“It seems like they are just getting careless.”

Mr Tear said he had bought the comforter online and paid $55 to ship it to the island – including $5.89 in duty.

He added: “That’s what I paid for Customs to damage it.”

The package was resealed with ZipX branded tape, but Mr Tear said he was certain it was Customs who opened the package rather than ZipX staff.

He said: “I really don’t like that they use ZipX tape. Customers see that and, if they don’t know any better, ZipX gets all the negative feedback.

“It has been years. You would think they would have their own tape by now.”

Mr Tear added that he could file a claim to Customs for the damage, but that should not be needed when the damage was obvious and the Customs officer would have been aware of it.

He asked: “Why should the customer have to fill out a claim when they have done the damage?”

He also suggested that Customs officers should leave a card with their badge number in boxes they inspected to makes claims for damage easier.

A spokeswoman for Customs said the department was aware of the case and was investigating.