Just checked my records. Last transaction I did outside the US was a purchase from Al Pascia 1/2020. Totally smooth, no duties.
I started hearing stories about global shipping being an issue no later than April 2020.
I don’t think I still need to wear a mask, but that doesn’t mean global shipping is anywhere close to back to normal.
Pipes and tobacco aren’t exempt from these issues.
As small value items in the grand scheme of things, you aren’t going to get anyone In a customer service department of a carrier to pay a whole heck of a lot of attention.
I started buying pipes from Italy and pipes and tobacco from the U.K. around 1983. I expected issues, but I got paid good money to solve other, more complicated, problems for other people, so I figured in my spare time I could solve the inevitable glitches that arose back then from my own hobby.
I have had multiple shipments of pipes held up— as many as a dozen estate pieces one time- because some idiot thought they were drug paraphernalia. I finally got a customs supervisor to agree that nobody in their right mind would be paying about $1000 for 12 drug pipes. Then I had to convince him that I was in my right mind to be paying that much for tobacco pipes. ?
This stuff used to be hard. Wire transfers, phone calls with people who barely spoke English, phone calls with UK shops where no one could understand my English, trying to get the VAT rebated back to me, you name it. Really hard.
Back to the future, deja vu all over, whatever.
Now that I am retired, I have no time for hassles. Back when I worked, dealing with stuff like this was sport f**king.
