Share your oversea shipping horror stories

[Gez]

Lior's thread about Dragon Magazine in Israel inspired me to start this one.

Let me tell you my own tale. A month ago, I passed my first (and more than probably last) order at RPGshop.com. I figured, since it partnered with ENWorld, it would be somewhat reliable and I could trust it. So I ordered a case of Giants of Legend.

It's still not shipped. Upon contacting their customer service, here's the reply I had:

Right now I'm trying to get the correct customs clearing for the to cases of minis. The customs office considers such a large order to be a business order and not a personal one, and thus, subject to different rules.​

And I've another one, this time through Amazon. I'll never trust again their "more buying options" -- Amazon itself is reliable, but the partnered shops aren't. Do not buy anything from ComicsNow, they're crooks!

How many of you have suffered from something similar? Orders that are never sent, orders that are blocked by the customs, orders that are lost, or whatever...

 

[DragonSword]

And I've another one, this time through Amazon. I'll never trust again their "more buying options" -- Amazon itself is reliable, but the partnered shops aren't. Do not buy anything from ComicsNow, they're crooks!

I always figured that most of the "more buying options" are too good to be true.

 

[The_Gunslinger658]

Howdy-

I do alot of business on eBay, mostly wargames, but I never have had a problem shipping overseas (knock on wood), there are two forms to fill out, a green one for a packet less then a pound and the white one for anything over a pound.
In you case Gez, this guy needs to fill out the white customs form for your items. Its actally not that tough either, I just check off documents.

hopefully things will work out.

Scott

 

[Tom Cashel]

Funny how exports from the US are such a big problem, while I've never had any trouble with ordering minis from Copplestone and the Foundry in the UK (and getting them imported to the US). The boxes have customs stickers on them, the contents are described as "toy soldiers," I open them and start painting.

 

[Cayle]

Recently (January) i had my first story with overeas shipping. I had ordered "Hellstone Deep" and "Black Ice Well" from Noble Knight (awesome store, just keepin' browsing it for "sometime in the future, i'll own all the cool out-of-print stuff" ), and it was shipped over to germany, waited a couple of days and shipped back marked "non reclame".
Waiting desperately for those modules to skim through, i was baffled when i was contacted, and they told me it was returned to the US.
Some funny part on resolving the package id for this package from Noble Knight (the language barrier) and some not so funny dealings with german parcel service later :\ i had to pay the shipping again, and this time it arrived, and fast i might add.
Still waiting for a refund, but no blame on Aaron from Noble Knight, zee Germans messed it all up. So it's not really problems with shipping, rather with national delivery, but anyway

regards,
Cayle

 

[TerraDave]

When I was living in Paris I tried to order from the EU (including the UK) to avoid customs. I think they have a policy of trying to crack down (or at least tax) transatlantic online shopping. But then again, there where things I had a hard time finding, and the FLGS, while nice in some ways, deffinately made you pay for "imported" game books.

My worst story involves a personal package however. A little while back the US postal service stopped sending packages through France Post, and used a private contractor...the package ended up at the airport, we really couldn't arrange a delivery, and it was sent back, where it apparently spent a long time in New Jersey before it got back to Virginia. It would be a year before we came to the US and got the contents. The US Post office has went back to sending things through the French postal system

 

[johnsemlak]

Oh, too many to count.

I lived in France for a while as a kid, and when we returned we had a shipment which contained a large number of D&D books go missing. Lost of number of valuable items then.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Not an order problem, but a shipping one. Last fall, Viking Bastard posted that he couldn't get any Michael Moorcock novels in Iceland, and he wanted to read something by him. I have several duplicate paperbacks on my shelf, so I figured I'd send him a few so he could see what Moorcock's like. I packed them up, shipped them out (seamail, airmail was REALLY expensive), and let him know they were on their way. A few months later, I emailed him to see if they had reached him. Here is what he wrote back:

Basically, they wanted to open it up and check out the contents. To do so, they need my written permission (if I refuse, which I have no intentions of doing, it just gets sent back). This took insane amounts of time consuming red-tape.

Then, after seeing there wasn't anything special inside, they wanted to see a receipt for the books. A receipt I don't have, as I didn't buy them. When I told them they were a gift, I was presented with everything from disbelief, to just plain confusion over procedure. This has yet to be dealt with.

Yesterday, the deadline for gettin' the package ran out. I don't know if that means it will be sent back or not. Under normal circumstances, it would, but I don't know what the procedure is for opened-receipt-needing packets. All my attempts of trying to find out have been to no avail.

Needless to say, about a month later, the books arrived in my mailbox, stamped "Refused by customs" or something similar to that.

 

[AdamBomb]

[How many of you have suffered from something similar? Orders that are never sent, orders that are blocked by the customs, orders that are lost, or whatever...

Had one bad experience while living in Australia. My dad sent a package from the US for my son with a Gameboy game and some coins, and labeled it as such on the customs declartion on the package. He didn't insure the package, and not surprisingly, it never arrived.
On all subsequent packages, he labeled them gifts/toys, and paid for insurance.
We never had another problem with things not arriving.

 

[BigTom]

I actually worked for the U.S. Customs Service through a subcontractor, and here is what I learned about them.

1) Custom's Agents are the most stressed people in Law Enforcement. Basically, they are the only uniformed, armed members of the government who do not receive the full law enforcement retirement package. So they have all the stress and none of the light at the end of the tunnel.

2) Customs Agents are a law unto themselves. Basically you have 3000 ports and very little ability to monitor them, so the agents in the field take a lot of liberties with the law to make the situation work. On the one hand, this can be good because they actually will do what they have to to get their border station working properly. On the other hand, the reason I had a job was that the central offices were taking responsibilities away from the border offices because the border offices were consistently violating federal laws and were dangerously behind in submitting needed paperwork.

For a humorous story:

One time, we received a manifest of seized good from a border station. Before forwarding it to the proper office, we read through it to see what was happening at the border. Not surprisingly, the most seized thing was small quantities of illegal drugs. The shocker was number two.

Beanie Babies.

There were several incidents were the border patrol went through the trouble of seizing beanie babies. That is exactly how they were listed on the manifest too. It wasn't until some time later that I found out that there is a treaty between the U.S. and Canada, and the beanie baby trademark is specially enforced under it. So there is a limit of I believe 2 beanie babies allowed on a trip.

I rest easier at night knowing that at least our borders are vigourously guarded from the horrible menace that is Canadian Beanie Babies