Not sure if this has been covered before, if so I apologize up front. I received an order for a custom rod from Italy. Well after days of communicating back and forth we finally got the details worked out and I went to work on the rod. Got the rod finished and went to the Post Office to have it shipped. Come to find out, you cannot ship anything into Italy that is over 79 inches long. So I had to go home and re-do the shipping tube. Just thought I would let everyone know, that before you ship into another country, you need to go to the USPS site, and look up that Country, and read all of the rules and laws about shipping into those countries. It will save you a lot of time and money. I never knew it would be so hard just to ship a rod.

Good point. I would think you would want to do this at the time you are dicussing the order with the customer. With shipping overseas being a major cost you'd want to have all the cards on the table before giving the customer a solid quote.

My most recent experience in international shipping:

Got a handful of coins to be used as inlays, taped them down onto cardboard, went to the post office, threw them into a protective envelope, filled out the customs form, and was informed at the window that it is illegal to ship currency of any form outside of the US. Then the battle ax clerk charged me $1.60 for the envelope. UPS informed me of the same thing. Doesn't matter if it's a brick of C-notes or a buck's worth of change.

I know there are a couple of easy ways around this, but with my luck it would be opened by customs and I'd wind up in the slammer for 20 years on some obscure charge for mailing some nickles. (I have a face that says "Make an example out of me").

I'm waiting for responses from coin dealers etc to see how they do it/if they can serve as a middleman of sorts, but meanwhile, does anybody here have any knowledge on this?

Dundee- The feds don't come into this part of the country, send 'em to me, I'll send 'em to Myles.

Putter
Williston, ND



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/2005 01:13AM by Randy Parpart (Putter).

England and some of the other countries overseas have even shorter restrictions.. some are 60" .

Art

Guys, I thought I better comment on this one as I have had plenty of experience importing from the States. I have found that anything over 7' is going to cost heaps to get into Australia. If I go up to 7' I then usually buy 3 or more blanks at a time to even out the costs. 6'6" is a lot cheaper so most of my Imported rods now make up these measurements. I recently bought a Loomis MB844 from Paul ERWIN in the states and he had a hard time organising freight. Regradless of the freight costs, while the Aussie dollar is up, I will continue to import to get the blanks I want. It still works out much cheaper than some of the "quality" blanks here in Aus.