Ferric Chloride and Ebay

[tramcar trev]

Well I bought some ferric chloride on ebay and all went sort of smoothly until it arrived in Au... I got a nasty letter from Customs telling me that "even though this product is not prohibited by postal transmission it causes distress to the Customs drug sniffer dogs". The letter was included along with a flyer telling me the package had been open by customs..... But obviously these dogs are exceptionally well trained but maybe they should be tought to read because my package had a warning lable on it. Then again I guess some types would go to great lengths to import controlled substances.... And a simple solution would be to replace their crystals with say Ammonium Persulphate and see what happens when they mainline on that.....

 

[playmofire]

Au customs seem very keen. I once sent some Playmobil in an old cat food box (it had contained pouches of cat food) wirth the custom slip clearly marked "Toys" and that was opened.

However, Canadian customs are the worst. The customs slip and the sender's name and address must go on the front of the package (difficult with a small package), top left corner, and they even specify which has to be the top one. If you don't follow the rules exactly, the parcel is sent back.

 

[generalboy80]

Good old Australian customs. To be fair, they generally do a very good job but when they do something odd they do it in style. Going back a number of years now, a friend in the US decided to send some freshly grown popcorn kernels from deepest rural Iowa. The first I knew of her kindness was when I received a sternly worded letter from the customs office advising me, and rightly so, that it was a biosecurity risk. They finished the letter with the choice of either paying them money to destroy said popcorn, or doing nothing and they would destroy it. Needless to say, I picked the latter......

-David Morris

 

[tramcar trev]

I did try to buy it here but its not that simple to buy small quantities....I'm also going to try the Muriatic acid and hydrogen peroxide mix as well, there are some very interesting claims made about it.

 

[Cyclone]

They finished the letter with the choice of either paying them money to destroy said popcorn, or doing nothing and they would destroy it. Needless to say, I picked the latter......

-David Morris

Thats a beauty.

 

[GAP]

I used to work for Aust Post in the customs area and have seen all sorts of stuff coming in. The main offenders were people from Asia and Europe sending food parcels eg homemade salamis etc.
The quarantine guys just took the stuff and sent the label and a letter saying that it had been destroyed.
I have seen parcels with certain substances in them that customs let through to see who claimed them.