Best way to send Pandora from UK to Germany?


HelenF

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I had one of the Pandoras with a self-destructing touchscreen, which I avoided triggering for a while, but it needs fixing now.

I received it via UPS for 18.70 EUR delivery charge, but the UPS website quotes a lot more for sending it the opposite way.

Royal Mail is odd. It has Tracked & Signed, Tracked, or Signed, which all offer compensation up to £250 and are all the same price except that Tracked has VAT added on top.

And I'm pretty sure there is something wrong with the "Prohibited items" list on this page, but I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to say: http://www.royalmail.com/germany
 
That list is unbelievable! We can't send nuclear reactors via Royal Mail? No fair!

There is an awful lot of strange stuff on there, including videogames. :huh:

If you remove the Pandora battery you should be able to send it (just the machine) via any courier. The battery is the only dangerous thing here really. Remember to remove your SD card before transport too (just in case you get a different machine back, not because it's dangerous). And make sure it's very well padded and boxed. Certain couriers seem to enjoy playing football with items marked as "fragile" or "electronic goods." I've seen the results first hand and via forums such as JAMMA+ :(
 
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They only list that stuff as prohibited as some of it may be taken by aircraft for quicker postage. It's pretty much the norm here in Australia too.


I suggest removing the battery & SD Cards as suggested and reporting to Royalmail there's no dangerous goods inside.
 
There is an awful lot of strange stuff on there, including videogames.
No kidding.  Wood, metal, coins/money, toys and game requisites(?), art, antiques, sound recorders and reproducers, television image and sound recorders and reproducers and parts and accessories...
 
I think Royal Mail have accidentally flattened a 2-level list structure on that web page, so that "Live animals; animal products", "Vegetable products", "Mineral products", "Products of the chemical or allied industries" and some others are supposed to be headings with the actual prohibited items in sub-categories.

Still, Royal Mail prohibits lithium batteries not sent with equipment, including coin cells, in domestic post (which I don't think is sent on aircraft). And a lot of people ignore this. I wonder if the actual mail-order battery shops have come to some arrangement, since it's pretty obvious from publically-available information that they do mail quite a lot of these.

The USPS list for Germany is a lot shorter:

http://pe.usps.com/text/imm/fh_011.htm

Italy has some really odd prohibitions though, such as clothes, footwear, playing cards, and "toys not made wholly of wood" (and they are known for confiscating parcels).

http://pe.usps.com/text/imm/il_008.htm
 
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