Comments | krasnoludek: Shipping items to France

krasnoludek

Shipping items to France

Feb 05, 2009 16:14

Before we left Berkeley, we wanted to send two packages to France because there were some books and kitchen items that would have weighed our bags down too much. It turns out though, that as of a few months ago, the US Postal Service doesn't ship by surface internationally anymore. So no packages by sea that take a couple weeks to arrive; instead ( Read more... )

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Comments 4

once_a_banana February 5 2009, 19:14:14 UTC

Ha ha ha, she screwed you over, and you let her! This is one of those times when, upon being asked what's in there, you just say "books" and leave it at that. It's too bad she decided to pull a bullshit power trip on you, but obviously they don't "check the packages" like she's saying. It probably didn't even get randomly selected for an explosives scan.

krasnoludek February 5 2009, 21:11:44 UTC

yeah, it sucked. She asked what was inside and I replied confidently that it was books and papers because I had looked at the site. If anything, I was expecting her to ask what kind of papers they were, since handwritten or typed stuff was excluded by the wording. But, no, she had problems with there being any kind of papers and no matter what I couldn't convince her. While it did suck, the difference in cost was less than $20 -- even with the M-bags I would have paid over $80 and that was way more than the $40 to $60 tops that I was expecting to pay.

I also believed her about the checking thing since I know with regular domestic book rate packages, they've gotten more tight about screening them and dealing with violations.

once_a_banana February 5 2009, 21:20:01 UTC

Sure, but by "gotten more tight", I wonder if that means just for really obvious stuff, like things with totally the wrong weight and x-ray pattern from books. I'm guessing that their scanners wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a stack of books and a stack of books with a few loose leaf photocopies thrown in - it's all paper, after all.

krasnoludek February 5 2009, 21:29:08 UTC

yeah, I don't think they would have been suspicious unless they actually opened it, which they can totally legally do since it's crossing the national border. The rules for search and seizure are faaaaaaaaaar looser for US citizens and their property when they're coming in/out of the country. No need for suspicion, nothing.