So yeah, you can no longer use the US Postal Service to ship Lithium or Lithium-Ion batteries overseas. This includes batteries that are packed with electronics, packed separately from them, or that form an integral part of them. So quite a few portable electronics basically.
This includes the APO and FPO addresses used by military personnel stationed overseas. And it includes the brand new Thinkpad laptop that I just dropped two grand for that arrived at my dad’s house right before the lithium battery shipping ban became official.
I understand why they decided on this, due to the risk of fires caused by lithium batteries, but the timing makes it horribly inconvenient for me. To add to the frustration, there is no restriction on taking the same batteries aboard airplanes as luggage, or shipping them via FedEX or UPS air services. Neither of the latter two can make deliveries to military folks overseas, of course, since we can only get our packages via USPS.
Don’t get me wrong, normally, I’m USPS’s biggest fan. They have provided me solid service at a great price. Certainly a far cry better than friggen FedEx ever was for me.
Blah, so yeah, it looks like the only way I’m getting that laptop that I spent that money on now is to wait until the next time I fly home on leave.:mad:
Have your dad remove the battery/s from the packing, ship the computer. GO to a computer store in your area of duty, buy a replacement battery. Pick up the battery when you go home. Or find a local friend with a non base address, have your dad ship the battery to that address.
How much more does FedEx or UPS charge for APO / FPO service?
It is unfortunate, considering how many lithium batteries are in things now, but it’s not the USPS’s fault - they’re just following restrictions set by the airlines, or more precisely, the International Civil Aviation Organization.
That might work, if there is a local shop near him that sells his laptop model’s battery.
Seeing how varied laptop batteries are, that might not be the case, especially with a newer laptop.
Plus, you know…needless spending of money…depending on make/model, it might be $50-$60.
Obviously, if that’s the only solution, than that’s what has to be done, but it’s still very annoying and I hope they find a better solution to the battery problems than simply not shipping them. I mean…what’s next, regular airlines not allowing lithium-ion batteries in carry-ons? (From my understanding, they already don’t allow them in checked baggage, and you can only have the one battery in the device, no extras.)
Right now my dad’s solution is “Let me see what I can do.” If that doesn’t work, I’m probably just gonna have him ship me the laptop sans battery and I’ll hope to find one in a Japanese electronics shop. The brand’s not that rare, but the model I ordered isn’t one that I see sold out here, so here’s hoping it has some battery commonality with some of the models they do sell.
Times like this make me wish I actually had some Japanese friends. For the last six months I’ve been relying on a most unlikely interpreter, a (pardon the expression) sassy black woman who you really wouldn’t expect to speak Japanese except for the fact that, well, she does. And she’s moving stateside in a week or two. :eek:
Figures. I spend a year studying Mandarin Chinese and then move to Japan. I feel like a friggin’ genius sometimes.
Can you check with the american embassy to see if they can accept a UPS for you, or if you can get it delivered to ‘general delivery’ at the UPS office? Supposedly they have UPS in Japan …
Diplomatic Post Offices (recently split off from APO/FPO–but not completely) follow the same procedures.
I think the big push for a solution will come from the Army Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) due to lack of sales and shipments to customers overseas.
The official notices claim that USPS et al hope to find a solution by 1 January 2013.
It wouldn’t be so bad if AAFES’s website had a bit better selection. I could see them working this issue with a click-to-brick sales solution. Order what you want, it gets tossed in with whatever shipment of merchandise going overseas, and you pick it up at the store (I’ve even done that a few times stateside).
The problem is, unless something drastic has changed in the last year or so since I last shopped their website, AAFES’s online selection kinda blows.
As an aside, the guy at the computer store on base told me that they are making a killing on this, as their merchandise isn’t shipped via USPS (they aren’t military or government employee, so they don’t get an APO address on base). He’s looking into getting that battery for me for a small surcharge.
The stupid thing about all of this is that no USPS planes or anything are used once APO/FPO mail leaves national borders - it’s all dumped in a warehouse somewhere in the lower 48, where the military postal system proceeds to - well, first they thrash your things about so your parcels get nice and dented, then they wait for an extra couple weeks, then send it to it’s destination via military assets. It’s a self-contained system.
My husband is amazed it took the USPS so long to adopt this policy. (He works at an Amazon dot com warehouse.) According to him, Amazon’s carriers have had a policy in place for some time about not shipping lithium batteries overseas. He told me the reason for this is simple, they don’t want the batteries exploding in flight. Amazon only ships lithium batteries via ground.
Really, honestly wish Amazon would just explain their shipping policies to the customers sometime. The seemingly arbitrary restrictions on what they will and won’t ship to APO/FPO is the stuff of legend overseas. For some reason, they absolutely would not ship any battery charger I tried to buy for my camera, except for one that came with two batteries, rather than any of the ones I wanted with no batteries included. So now I have three batteries for a camera I only use sometimes.
