International Shipping Tips and Experiences

[PaulieD]

I was hoping to start a thread that would help people ship internationally. I thought a thread that told the facts and or experiences or both of international shipping would be invaluable. Maybe some suppliers could post here too with their tips and /or methods of shipping internationally. Tips for filling out customs forms would be helpful. This may be stickied if it contains solid international shipping info?

 

[Iffy]

I'll leave da paperwork to others. But here is a lil' hint that will help minimize joose leakage when mailing flexible plastic bottles.

Remove the cap and gently squeeze the bottle and replace the cap tightly while still squeezing.

This will allow some liquid expansion due to heat and/or altitude without leakage.

 

[Jackiej5407]

Well THIS topic sure hits home in my recent past ... my husband works in Malaysia for an oil-related U.S. company, and he recently ran out of "our" RY4 from Quick-Nic. I had warned him that not all juice is created equal, but he had to find a vape shop in Malaysia and buy a few bottles of their e-juice. Needless to say, it was wretched stuff, and he begged me to send him 2-30ml bottles of RY4. After going to a local mailing place that did international FedEx shipping, I found out that it would cost $117 to FedEx a small envelope weighing less than a pound! Not only that, but I had to fill out the Customs Declaration forms in triplicate (I did that on-line to save my writing hand), AND I had to enclose Safety Data about e-juice since I was shipping a liquid. After over an hour of looking for safety data online, I finally came across the report to enclose at: http://www.........../images/main/msds/SH081111-190.pdf ... it's a seven page report.

I sent the juice off to him last Thursday, and am STILL tracking it as it makes it's slow way through both Customs & Malaysia. What a deal!

 

[ByeByeCoffinNails]

As mentioned elsewhere, New Zealand has no bricks and mortar storefronts for PVs and no ejuice retailers. Everything is imported by international shipping!

My tip would be- use those smaller bubble envelopes. They do the job. You don't have to wrap each bottle seperately- those that do are very kind and deserve a medal for action beyond the call of duty. I have never had a juice bottle get damaged in the post.

One thing hardware vendors need to understand is that many Postal Agencies will not allow the shipping of batteries (we can receive them but can't post them- that makes sense... NOT!). Returning defective batteries is therefore... interesting.

It is amazing how much bias there is against international delivery in the US. This applies to anything- books, jewellery, shoes, clothes and ecig products. I imagine US citizens coming to live here must feel totally isolated from the world. Our shops are about five years behind in everything, have very low stock levels and poor quality, our retailers notoriously fleece their customers and our dollar is about 0.8 US dollars. So when we order stuff from outside of our country, it's because we can't buy it here!

It must be difficult for some US Vendors to imagine living in a country that more often than not isn't on a lot of world maps because the curvature of the map hides it. When shopping online two years ago for my wedding- I got some unrepeatable responses from US businesses to just the idea of posting goods out here.


I fixed it for you!

We Kiwis and our Aussie cousins have a saying "Give us a Fair Go!". I couldn't put it better.


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