General Forum

I have been informed by mutipile post offices that mail with cards going to another country needs to have tracking or it might get sent back to the sender apparently baseball cards are now conidered to be ''cardboard'' and cardboard has to be tracked (or so I've been told). So I've now gone 3 different post offices and they have said the same thing at all of them so I just said that I will take my chances with the packages. Has anyone else heard this?

Birthday cards are card board .. Doesn't make any sense..

they are probably refering to this statement online for international mailing. Contents can only be of no value otherwise customs form is needed. I only mail direct from my house so there isn't any interference.

Send International Mail: Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Ask, "Can I Send This?"

Different countries have different rules on what they’ll allow in. Look up your destination country in the Index of Countries and Localities to make sure you’re following their rules.

If you’re just sending correspondence (no trading cards, bookmarks, stickers, etc.) or nonnegotiable documents (just paper; no cash, checks, or other items that have cash value), you don’t need a customs form.

Reminder: You can only use First-Class Mail International® service to send correspondence (like a personal or business letter) or other nonnegotiable documents in a letter that weighs up to 3.5 oz or large envelope that weighs under 15.994 oz.

No and that's pure BS. Why it would need to be tracked? Customs form will be required way before tracking get required and this is currently not the case. It sounds more like a stupid upsale trick. By the way, were the three locations brick and mortar post offices or postal counters in a pharmacy/business?

I also mail from my home with international stamp and additional ounce stamps if necessary.  I have yet to have a problem.  I avoid talking to postal clerks as much as possible.  There are a couple smaller post offices that I've had no issues with, but again most of the time I send from my home and put it in my mailbox with the flag up.

I guess, for small amounts of cards, they could be slipped into a Birthday/Holiday Card and shipped that way....

Might get around Governmental BS.....

Ridiculous. Many countires once mail hits their boarders the tracking stops becuase the other country doesn't have any kind of mail tracking system.

this happend to me recently.  but it wasnt tracking, it was customs forms. trying to send 4 trades international via pwe none over 3 oz.

to bypass this, i've been going out of my way to the postal kisok.  not only is that open 24/7, it prints nice postage easy to affix to envelope. accurately weighs and calculates postage too i may start doing this for domestic trades as i've been told i've shortated postage more than once.  even when i used to hand the envelope to the clerk for them to verify i had enough postage.

I think they are trying to get more $$$ by coming up with this weird stuff. Apparently any bubble mailer is a package no matter how thin it is.

I mail everything from home. I have a small scale I bought on Amazon. I have U.S. and Intl Forever stamps, extra ounce stamps, envelopes, bubble mailers, boxes, etc. and use PayPal ShipStation for any non-PWE items.

Correct. All bubble mailers will immediately be flagged as a package. The PO has been cracking down more and more to be consistent for the last 5 years or so. When I started trading here, I was able to send a few bubble mailers with standard postage because they were 1 ounce or less. I don't even try it anymore, not worth it. 

I use a cheap digital food scale and anything more than 1.0 ounces gets an additional ounce stamp, more than 2.0 ounces gets 2 add'l ounce stamps.