OK, here it goes, not real bad, but rather annoying.......

I sold a Upper, and went to ship it today, now since I was planning a trip to the Yamaha dealer anyway, I thought I would ship the uppper, stop by Yamaha, and stop by a gun shop just to browse....

OK, first stop UPS, I walk in and stop at a computer, fill out the shipping info and get my little tag to put on the box....

 Walk up to the clerk, who from past experiance, is anti gun....

Well she scans the tag and asks is this only a barrel?

Yes I reply, (Now I filled out on the shipping form, that it was a rifle barrel only, and insured)

She says well I cant ship that, you have to be a dealer.

No, I reply, the barrel is not the firearm, it is only a piece of metel, and anyone can ship to anyone, no dealer is needed.....

After a bit she says OK, BUT I have to open the box..

Fine I said, so she opens the box and looks at the upper, without a clue as to what she was looking at.

She says nothing, tapes up the box and starts the process to ship, then she says, we recieved word today, that UPS can longer ship anything automatic.

Really I said, well thats ok, all I have is SEMI-AUTOMATICS, so that will not apply to me....

I take my reciept say Have a nice day and walk out the door, shaking my head.....

I just don't tell them what's in the box.  I put hardware on the shipping invoice for the insurance.  But I also use fedEx

It's a machine part.  Not even lying when you say that.

What did you expect? Isn't that why they're called "big brown", as in shit stain?

It is usually the clerk who is uneducated and tries to impose their dim witted interpretation of the regs.  One Fedex clerk asked the shipper if the firing pins were removed.  There is no requirement for that.  

My latest one was while shipping a stock at the UPS store (formerly mailboxes and ripoffs etcetera).  I had the entire package wrapped in heavy brown shipping paper with all corners taped with standard shipping tape.  The fuck said that every square inch of the package needed to be taped and that they had to charge me an extra dollar for it.  I am sure they make a ton of money with that ripoff.  I asked them when the policy started.  I went home and called UPS customer service.  They said that the UPS store was privately owned and not part of UPS.  I remained calm and said the store has UPS on the sign, and UPS on the clerks uniforms.  If they weren't UPS, then something was out of control.  There was a pause.  I then said that I had been shipping UPS for over 20 years and had control of commercial shipping contracts and was very tired of every entity of UPS making up regs as they went along.  I mentioned that this dollar could become two, five, or ten and just totally rip off UPS consumers.  She said that was the way it is.  I remained calm and stated that she must have misunderstood my reason for calling.  This wasn't going to be a "just the way it is" answer, hang up, and it all goes away.  I called because I wanted this corrected and future business decisions would be based on her decisions made during this phone conversation and it was all going into a written statement.  Next came "Oh, would you like to file a complaint?".  

What I don't get is why she didn't think this rated a formal complaint from the mere description of the store's ripoff policy.  A complaint has been filed.  The way I figure it, the man-hours for follow-up will far surpass the $1 that they charged me.  

Those fucks need to get their personnel under control.  Bastards!  

They still haven't found my upper that they lost a month ago......and the lady I'm supposed to contact about it only works half-days, according to her office-mates.

What is DHL's policy on shipping guns and guns in general?

S.O.

From DHL's wed site:

2. Unacceptable Shipments
Shipper agrees that its Shipment is acceptable for transportation and is deemed unacceptable if:

• It is classified as hazardous material, dangerous goods, prohibited or restricted articles
  by IATA (International Air Transport Association), ICAO (International Civil Aviation
  Organization), any applicable government department or other relevant organization;
• No customs declaration is made when required by applicable customs regulations; or
• DHL decides it cannot transport an item safely or legally (such items include but are not
  limited to: animals, bullion, currency, bearer form negotiable instruments, precious
  metals and stones, firearms, parts thereof and ammunition, human remains,
  pornography and illegal narcotics/drugs).

Weird. I just print my stuff out at home and drop it off at the neighborhood Kinko's four blocks away......