Here is a little cautionary tale. Every week we ship down from the UK by courier hundreds of kilos of goods from our Birmingham warehouse. This is post received in the UK destined for customers in Spain and, often, we are our own best customer.
This week one of the boxes destined for us was opened and re-sealed with FedEx GB/MHZA tape. Among the other contents was an empty padded bag containing just an invoice for some scent which was destined for my wife’s Christmas Stocking.
It was not a pressurised aerosol and it was not of sufficient alcohol content to be a dangerous good but it was removed as part of a normal courier security procedure that follows the x-ray of every single parcel that FedEx or UPS send (and another envelope was slit open, too, just containing a spare petrol cap).
Now, we are lucky enough to have excellent relations with FedEx UK. A very incensed wife called FedEx, she was convinced that someone had stolen it at the x-ray desk and it was now destined for another’s Christmas stocking. FedEx located the item and are returning it to our Bond Street warehouse in Birmingham. Normally the whole box is returned and the shipment thereby badly delayed.
But the point of this story is that courier companies are on high alert and not just in Europe, we have had problems in the USA and Chile recently. Especially with sending luggage by courier, which might contain toiletries, please be absolutely sure that your parcel does not contain any of the following (Nº 13 goods prohibited by IATA is the cause of the perfume being rejeced).
A non-inclusive list of illegal
shipments by Courier
1. Alcohol, Tobacco and any illegal or Narcotic drug.
2. C.O.D. shipments.
3. Human corpses, human
organs or body parts, human and animal embryos, or cremated or disinterred
human remains.
4. Explosives
5. Firearms, weaponry and
their parts.
6. Perishable foodstuffs
and foods and beverages requiring refrigeration or other environmental control.
7. Live animals including
insects.
8. Plants and plant
material, including cut flowers.
9. Lottery tickets and
gambling devices where prohibited by law.
10. Money (coins, cash,
currency, paper money and negotiable instruments equivalent to cash such as
endorsed stocks, bonds and cash letters).
11. Collectable coins and
stamps.
12. Pornographic and/or
obscene material.
13. Prohibited orrestricted articles by IATA (International
Air Transport Association), ICAO(International Civil Aviation Organisation),
any applicable government department or other relevant organisation;
14. Hazardous waste,
including, but not limited to, used hypodermic needles or syringes or other
medical waste.
15. Shipments that may
cause damage to, or delay of, equipment, personnel or other shipments.
16. Shipments that
require us to obtain any special license or permit for transportation, importation
or exportation.
17. Shipments or
commodities whose carriage, importation or exportation is
prohibited by any law,
statute or regulation.
18. Shipments with a
declared value for customs in excess of that permitted for a specific destination.
(See the Declared Value for Carriage and Limits of Liability section.)
19. Dangerous goods.
20. Processed or
unprocessed dead animals, including insects and pets. Taxidermy finished hunting
trophies or completely processed (dried) specimens of whole animals or parts of
animals are acceptable for shipment into theU.S.
21. Packages that are
wet, leaking or emit an odor of any kind.
22. Wildlife products
that require U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service export clearance by FedEx prior to
exportation from theU.S.
