AusPost Shopmate

[Aubrey]

The new US post forwarding service.

I bought a used powder thrower and sent it to Auspost in USA. They have just deemed it as "dangerous goods". Idiots!

We'll see what happens....

[6.5x55ai]

They all must use the same wishy washy criteria. New Zealand Post run a similar system call YouShop and thru them I have a USA address in Portland Or. To date I have been most successful shipping many items to NZ including reloading dies and various reloading tools. That is until last week when they rejected the following item http://www.pmatool.com/product_info.php?products_id=486 under their Dangerous Goods ruling. W----ers. Unfortunately, I think they were influenced by the other items on display on the vendors website.

[Aubrey]

Looks like same crowd:

North Bybee Lake Court
Suite SM-2115-xxxx
Portland
Oregon
97203

Phone number
(503) 736 5916

They had better catch a wake very soon, I'm getting fired up!

[6.5x55ai]

Looks like same crowd:

North Bybee Lake Court
Suite SM-2115-xxxx
Portland
Oregon
97203

Phone number
(503) 736 5916

They had better catch a wake very soon, I'm getting fired up!

Snap - the very same. The worst thing is they don't supply a list of verboten items, you have to find out the painful way.

[RDavies]

Can someone explain what this new rule is? It is a while since I have ordered anything from USA, but I heard somewhere that we cant just order like we used to, what is the situation now?

[aaronraad]

After Sinclair Int got their fingers burnt a few years back it's all been up in the air since. Basically it pivots off the ITAR descriptions and they essentially vary with interpretation. Some companies have their products registered for export but this is relatively expensive so a large number of companies don't bother and have dropped export sales altogether with local demand being so high.

This is where re-sellers, wholesalers and distributors can get caught out if they are willing to export someone else's product. The product doesn't have to be registered by both the manufacturer and exporter but someone has to pay the cost at least once. Manufacturers don't necessarily know if their product will be exported either.

Do you know the ITAR legislation includes information, not just materials? You wonder why some of the US shooters are so paranoid about big government, when all it takes is an ITAR official to find you in breech of something about ballistics or reloading you've decided to share on your website blog or an Internet forum. So even if you come up with a bonza little Excel spreadsheet on wind reading or statistical group analysis, you have to think twice about sharing with other guys at the shooting club let alone on an open Internet forum.

I've heard too many bad reports/reviews concerning these US postal address services to trust them with any of my shipping requirements. From what I understand, you pretty much don't have a leg to stand on if things go awry because essentially you've bought the item under fraudulent pretences, but those are my words.

[RDavies]

So, can we still just order things from O.S and have them arrive here, or is it hit and miss? What happens if it isn't allowed, do you get sent a letter and they return the goods to the seller, or what?

[macguru]

Rod, when it happened to me they wanted about $20 to post it back to the seller so as it was a small part i elected to trash it, and they threw it away...

I would say only deal with sellers who will ship to aus, or buy locally, or cultivate someone in the USA who is prepare to receive and ship to you, then your only concern is not to break our import laws too flagrantly ! (NO 300 blackout AR15s !!)

cheers Andrew

[bsouthernau]

...... or cultivate someone in the USA who is prepare to receive and ship to you,

I can recommend High Bridge Arms in San Francisco for this. Good service and reasonable charges.

Barry

[RDavies]

...... or cultivate someone in the USA who is prepare to receive and ship to you,

I can recommend High Bridge Arms in San Francisco for this. Good service and reasonable charges.

Barry

Thanks for the tip Barry, I would say a gun shop wont be so silly on what they can and cant send.

[Fergus Bailey]

Thanks for the tip Barry, I would say a gun shop wont be so silly on what they can and cant send.

Unfortunately thats often not the case. Over the last few years, the US State Department have been actively auditing businesses in the firearms industry and handing out a lot of warnings to the business owners and staff. I asked one firm that had recently had a visit from the State Department to send me a case neck turner. They were happy to, but only after I had an export permit from the US State Department.

This, coupled with the size of the size of the US firearms market means that a lot of businesses in the industry just cant be bothered to cater to the international market.