Support our troops?

[LV21]

So this is a bit of a rant, my wife and I are with the military stationed in Germany. She is active duty, I am a retired German officer and I work for the US military as a civilian. We order goods by amazon or buy things of ebay. In order to send things one has to fill out a customs form. We are considered US but out mail goes through customs in Germany. 98% of ebay vendors send to our APO with no problem at all. I even had a guy who made a part for my Lee case collator send things twice because he forgot to write part of our address on the box It was a part for $5 and he send it twice!

Well, over the holiday weekend, I shopped on ebay and saw a 3D printed primer collector for my RCBS press, a part for $18 which I ordered. Today the vendor refunded me the money because it os too much trouble for him to ship APO. I hope vendors like this don't have a "Support our troops" sticker on the back of their cars! It's a shame!

 

[Ignition Override]

“Katherine Vikor” reloads .308 in Norway (Youtube channel) with a single-stage Lee press. Her gunpowder comes from Finland.

Do German import regs (and gun accessory laws) allow you to order the item(s) you need from there or the Czech Republic usw ?

If so, you might also contact Palomar Tactical in Slovenia.

Viel Glück.

 

[LV21]

It has nothing to do with German regs when it comes to accessories. I can not have barrels or actions or ITAR restricted parts, if the seller has no export permission, send to me but other parts yes, especially 3D printed plastic parts.

Sure there are shipping services you can use as a middle man, but I in most cases, the fee and postage for the middle man service makes it way to expensive. In this case, it would have been an extra 25 to 40 USD so send an $18 part.

 

[Buzznrose]

“Support the Troops” doesn’t mean that the vendor responds to your every whim or want.

I am a retired USAF veteran (28 years) and have done several tours overseas. Some vendors support APO addresses and some don’t…there are also rules they need to follow. Small businesses don’t always support because they don’t have staff or knowledge and simply don’t want to get in trouble for making a mistake.

So get over it and be grateful for the support and benefits you do get from vendors who give us some great deals and relax when vendors don’t.

 

[Robert]

Eh, a smaller seller on eBay not wanting to ship overseas, for whatever reason, is not really on topic for THR. It's not a firearms issues nor a Second Amendment issue, so it's a bit outside of our scope of focus.