"US Customs Service" Topic

I just wanted to record my thanks for the diligent service provided by this wonderful body of men and women.

I sent a 15mm army by post to Canada, but it touched down first in the USA, where Customs opened the package, removed all the individually wrapped bases and removed the bubble wrapping. They then threw the figures back in the box, piled the bubble wrap and styrene packing on top and placed a sticker on the box explaining they had opened it and examined the items.

Unfortunately the figures suffered some fairly severe damage in the rest of their journey, but at least it is good to know that suspect packages are being so closely investigated!

Yes, I'm been a victim of their diligence as well. They are very diligent and gentle with the figures.

In their defense….

Hey boss, look at this one in the XRay maching. Seems to be full of hundreds of small, pointy, metal bits. Schrapnel?

But yeah, the arrogance is grating.

I'd sue them in small claims court for damages.

Your tax dollars at work.

I love the random and arbitrary nature of the custom service. One year I stopped in Canada from Michigan and picked up a TON of beer and spirits (brands and varieties not easily found on this side of the border). I knew I would have to pay the taxes on the lot so I just screwed up my resolve and prepared my wallet for the return drive. "Anything to declare?" Yes, quite a bit of booze (3 cases of beer and 12 bottles of spirits). "Please pull over and go inside the office." Inside the office they looked it over and said, "Three dollars." I paid cash and got no receipt. I'm sure the money went straight into the vending machine, not that I cared.

EC, I can understand the opening of the parcel, and the unwrapping of two or three of the little packets to ensure nothing dodgy was concealed. But all of the wrapping off all of the figures? It must have been a very slow night! Maybe they had a game?

I'd sue them in small claims court for damages.

Can't sue the government without its permission. Write your Congressman and Senators.

Please don't quote me, but I believe that in the UK Customs can dismantle a car or other vehicle coming into the country – and you are responsible for putting it back together…

I once sent some 2mm figures to Canada with a friend of the purchaser who was visiting Liverpool for business. I included a photo of the contents to avoid them being unwrapped etc. It turned out to be a mistake as the customs people were so fascinated by the photos that they wanted to see them for real !!! They did, however get repackaged with care and many compliments.

Garrison is correct. And back in the good old days pre-merger with the Inland Revenue we used to carry a commission that empowered us to demand the assistance of the police and armed forces in our duties. Happy days. Shame we gave up the cutlasses! The US Customs do seem a little over zealous though. I would have thought that they would have given up after the 1st few packages. I would certainly write to their head office to complain.

Could be worse. Used to be perfectly legal to import a US-made baseball bat into Japan--but of course the Japanese inspectors drilled holes in the bats to make sure they were solid wood throughout. Every time. This went on for decades.

Should note that once when I deployment to MESA seemed likely, I devised a decent looking (sort of) miniature set--troops, terrain, rulers and all--with not a single metal component, hoping to dodge the X-ray machines. Missed the deployment, but the set is still in the garage.

Sadly this is why I only ship inside the US anymore. Tired of having my figs trampled on.

But even the local postal service has issues. This is from yesterday:

link

I sent a box to Australia to a friend with Xmas presents inside. One of the presents was a Texas state flag, as well as 3 little battery powered sea horses (as a joke, as his wife admired my seahorses in my marine aquarium). There was also quite a few resin sci-fi models. The box just disappeared into the ether.

After many emails back and forth and a few phone calls he apparently determined that it had been taken out into a field and burned, just to be safe. Turns out that a group of rabblerousers down-under uses the Texas flag as their symbol, and that the batteries were deemed unsafe for travel.

…riiiiiight… Me thinks someone was just bored. We were not amused.

Got to love liberal democracy at work, its all about securing the homeland, who's homeland? I'm not sure anymore. Time to do it all digitally and 3D it, try search and tax that big bro. Lost very few here but it is a pain to all who have to put their faith in a system that seems to not care and you have no basic recourse against. Isn't that the basics of decent society these guys claim to be part of? Wonder how they'd handle their goods being handled in so cavalier a fashion. Rant off

If you have Netflix, look up Border Agents: there are a number of series on border inspectors, what they do, and why. Very educational.

With regards to why open every single package/miniature? Because drug smugglers will try to pass off several "normal" packages, alongside of several, or even just a few, drug packets. They hope the first few samples will put the inspectors off.

They use X-ray machines which can differentiate between organic, and non-organic substances, but anything odd looking will get pulled out for an eyeball inspection. After watching Australian, Canadian, and US border inspectors, I have a new tolerance for what they do. I also won't ignore the declaration forms on food, anymore, either! It's much cheaper/easier to declare food, than to pay the fine if caught not declaring stuff… Cheers!

A Customs Broker I knew used to regale me with horror stories about how US Customs drilled holes in antiques, laughing about messing up the valuable antiques just for fun. If an importer complained they would find their next shipment held for inspection at considerable cost in storage fees. This was in the late 1970s. He was trying to talk me into going into the Customs Broker business but five trips with him observing the local US Customs lads go out of their way to damage property killed any desire to have to work around them. As the importers hired Broker he had to grin and bear the merry lads depredations or they would make his job a living hell. Petty little tyrants one and all. That said all my lead ordered from the UK arrives intact, probably because the orders are too small to cause anyone to think "bomb".

Sounds like UPS too – they used to play hockey with giant computer monitors using forklifts on their breaks, apparently, given all the skewered ones we received once.

Clearly, they weren't even trying to keep the forks lowered to go into the pallet beneath them.

Why would a parcel from the UK to Canada be opened by USA Customs?

More flights I suspect, and you can't have dodgy stuff being placed on/in jetliners.

Brigade – it was opened by Canadian customs.

I've never had this happen, but I guess I've just been exceedingly lucky.

GildasFacit – that wasn't clear as the first post says "but it touched down first in the USA, where Customs opened the package"

Had a nightmare with the US Postal Service back in June when I sent some 2nd hand figures to a guy in San Francisco. Lucky I put tracking on the package given what happened to it. The USPS lied about two attempts to deliver it (the guy was in all day both times); then spent three weeks sending it back and forth between two sorting offices; then lied that the address was "wrong" until I showed them copies of the labels with the correct address on them. The recipient had to go and pick it up himself in the end.

I now understand what caused the expression "going postal".

I quit sending figures by USPS a long time ago. I have been using FedEx for years and I send a lot of figs and I have never had a problem. Doesn't help you much with customs though.