[Nhcoll-l] new US Customs regulations?

[Tocci (Lewis-Gentry), Genevieve E.]

Good morning all,

We have been exclusively filling out the USPS customs forms online for about a year. Our local post office sent us several notifications in warning that only the online forms would be accepted, and we are in a big enough metro area that they were very strict from the beginning.

The nice thing is that while a bit more work than the paper forms it is easy to do online and print and no online account is necessary if you select the “USPS Customs forms tool” on the top of the customs forms page https://www.usps.com/international/customs-forms.htm

Best,
Genevieve

=================================================
Genevieve E. Tocci (she, her, hers)
Senior Curatorial Technician
Harvard University Herbaria
22 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138  U.S.A.
Phone: 617-495-1057  Fax: 617-495-9484
glewis-g at oeb.harvard.edu

From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Doug Yanega
Sent: Friday, February 28, 2020 1:30 PM
To: nhcoll <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] new US Customs regulations?


Hi, all. We have been having some serious problems trying to send specimens to overseas destinations in the past two months, and I'm wondering whether anyone else is having similar difficulties, and/or knows exactly how to comply with the new policies.

We have gotten packages returned with comments that we were using outdated forms, and we went to the Post Office and got what were ostensibly the new forms. Just today we got back a package with what we had thought was a correct form, but it had been stamped to indicate that they will not accept forms that are handwritten, and instead ONLY digital Customs forms will be accepted.

It's possible that these rejected shipments reflect some genuine changes in the regulations, but these days it seems like it could just as easily be that the personnel processing our shipments are mistakenly rejecting the shipments because THEY are confused.

If the former, we would expect that we are not the only US institution having difficulty shipping internationally. So, I have two essential questions:

(1) Has anyone else experienced similar rejections of shipments recently?

(2) Is anyone aware *definitively* of the correct new forms and procedures, especially if the forms must be filled out online?

Thanks in advance,

--

Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum

Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega

phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)

             https://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__faculty.ucr.edu_-7Eheraty_yanega.html&d=DwMCaQ&c=WO-RGvefibhHBZq3fL85hQ&r=EYdhJ0HrhAMcA2aVQ-I4N7lml00zxsXPbHYeP7843No&m=W8U2niuJUBB0RdqQ3iV6smshsjYvDDoTyHIU4zNkopU&s=yd168-9O1gwJR6kvnIB5ufpZOjsjkp_zYQ3nQQDMJkY&e=>

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        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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