Silk Road forums
Discussion => Shipping => Topic started by: Quarisi on August 26, 2013, 04:05 pm
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Hi guys,
I recently started out as a vendor here, only shipping to Europe. After a bunch of successful transactions, all customers being impressed by the professionalism and stealthiness of my packaging, I decided to branch out to the USA. That's where a bomb hit me (and my USA customers): none of them arrived after 15+ days of waiting.
Now, painful as this is, it's all being resolved as we speak and hopefully it won't be too big a hit on my reputation.
The more important question is: how on earth do NONE of them arrive when I spent so much time and care on getting my packaging top-notch? I read around on SR, the wiki, these forums, to get any information I could on shipping. Then I ordered some different stuff from some of the most successful vendors here and mimicked (even to some extent improved) the way they do their packaging. To me it seemed rock-solid; some of the vendors I sampled are fellow Dutchmen who seem to have no problems shipping worldwide (including USA).
I don't know what I could be missing. Is there any chance someone could point me towards a source to get (or buy) information that helps me to make my packaging more foolproof? Or point me out to a vendor who is known to be extremely good at this?
Thanks a ton!
Quarisi
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I see you sell pills, these are a lot more difficult to get through customs than most things. The only advice that I can give is that NL to USA gets looked at a lot closer than most things, just having smell proof packaging won't cut it. If it is opened the customs official needs to see something that makes sense and definitely nothing related to drugs.
For example if you have the pills in smell proof mylar bags then just placed into the package they will probably eventually be found, if a single package gets opened they'll find the pills easily and flag the rest of the packages. If you put the pills in an inner stealth item like a dvd or something the customs official will probably ask himself why somebody in the US orders their dvds from The Netherlands and become suspicious. Then all they have to do is x ray the dvd case or just open it up and once again every package is going to be flagged.
The best stealth is something that makes perfect sense, something legitimate businesses in the Netherlands would sell to people in the United States. So you need to ask yourself what items the Netherlands exports to the US and figure out a way to hide pills in one of these items (or a couple if you want to have multiple stealth options, this way if one gets figured out you don't lose all of your packages) so that the item doesn't look tampered with.
This is all the advice I can give, I've done a fair bit of ordering from Europe but only worked with a couple of vendors in the Netherlands who don't sell pills so I don't have any specific advice (it wouldn't be right to give it out even if I did).
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Firstly my man, how are you shipping your orders? You don't seem to be using any tracking because then it would be VERY easy for you to tell if the package simply has not arrived and is still on its way, or that it is stuck in customs and if it is stuck it customs for a decent amount of time (I have had orders sit in customs over a week and still make it through) consider it lost as it was seized.
So, it seems like you are just shipping by regular mail and if that is the case, have you ever considered the fact that it sometimes will take a lot longer then 15 days to post a letter all the way from the NL to the USA? I am a vendor in Canada that only ships to the USA by regular mail. It is not AT ALL unusual for my orders to take longer then 2 weeks to arrive and I am shipping from the closest country you can get to the USA. In fact, unless you live in the certain close by states, it USUALLY takes close to two weeks....Now, sometimes the mail can be very fast. Sometimes one of my regular customers that usually receives in 10 business days will get it in 4, postal delivery speeds are very inconsistent and I would NEVER ship somewhere so far away like you unless I could track it because chances are, their will be many times that the buyer needs to request an extension on the auto finalize date in the resolution center as it just simply has not arrived because of slow mail.
SECONDLY MAN (AND MAKE SURE YOU REALLY TAKE NOTE OF THIS) You are shipping for THE number ONE "red flagged" country. No matter what country you are shipping too, mail for the NL is scrutinized MUCH more heavily then mail coming in from say England as your country is a known drug source country...Shit, 90% of the time people travel there is because of the drug tourism. Everyone that has spent time on these forums know the ordering from the vendors in the NL have the least likely chance of getting through. Therefore, NL vendors have to have amazing, over the top stealth and pretty much all the big time MDMA/XTC dealers in the NL are famous for their amazing packaging and most of the time their packages will arrive with absolutely no issues.
So, from one vendor to another, my advice to you is only ship that far away if you have a way to track it....That is the only way you will know if it is simply in transit, in customs, or has been delievered just fine and the buyer is just lying to you trying to get a refund and most importantly, you have to have the best of the best stealth. Make is so it can't get any better....Shit, if you have to just place a small order (not from your vendor account obvi) from one of the big guys in the NL that is well known for their packaging so you can get some great idea's from them. Although, since t is a domestic order they most likely won't use the amazing stealth they do to get things across ocean's so perhaps that would not work but if you really think about it and get creative, you'll be able to ship to the USA no problem. If all these other vendors are doing it from the NL then so can you :)
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SECONDLY MAN (AND MAKE SURE YOU REALLY TAKE NOTE OF THIS) You are shipping for THE number ONE "red flagged" country. No matter what country you are shipping too, mail for the NL is scrutinized MUCH more heavily then mail coming in from say England as your country is a known drug source country...Shit, 90% of the time people travel there is because of the drug tourism. Everyone that has spent time on these forums know the ordering from the vendors in the NL have the least likely chance of getting through. Therefore, NL vendors have to have amazing, over the top stealth and pretty much all the big time MDMA/XTC dealers in the NL are famous for their amazing packaging and most of the time their packages will arrive with absolutely no issues.
Plus +1 for accurate and concise information.
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Thanks guys, you're really friendly and helpful here.
The best stealth is something that makes perfect sense, something legitimate businesses in the Netherlands would sell to people in the United States. So you need to ask yourself what items the Netherlands exports to the US and figure out a way to hide pills in one of these items (or a couple if you want to have multiple stealth options, this way if one gets figured out you don't lose all of your packages) so that the item doesn't look tampered with.
You made a very good point there. Although I already disguise it as a legitimate product, indeed it might not be something that someone would specifically have to order from NL. That's probably what I missed, and would not make my stealth choice convincing enough to let it through. I'm gonna think of something more creative and exclusive, thanks!
Firstly my man, how are you shipping your orders? You don't seem to be using any tracking because then it would be VERY easy for you to tell if the package simply has not arrived and is still on its way, or that it is stuck in customs and if it is stuck it customs for a decent amount of time (I have had orders sit in customs over a week and still make it through) consider it lost as it was seized.
See this is what I've been thinking of a LOT, but I am clueless on how to provide tracking without exposing me or my partner's identity one way or another. Is there any information on how this is done safely from NL?
So, it seems like you are just shipping by regular mail and if that is the case, have you ever considered the fact that it sometimes will take a lot longer then 15 days to post a letter all the way from the NL to the USA? I am a vendor in Canada that only ships to the USA by regular mail. It is not AT ALL unusual for my orders to take longer then 2 weeks to arrive and I am shipping from the closest country you can get to the USA. In fact, unless you live in the certain close by states, it USUALLY takes close to two weeks....Now, sometimes the mail can be very fast. Sometimes one of my regular customers that usually receives in 10 business days will get it in 4, postal delivery speeds are very inconsistent and I would NEVER ship somewhere so far away like you unless I could track it because chances are, their will be many times that the buyer needs to request an extension on the auto finalize date in the resolution center as it just simply has not arrived because of slow mail.
Some of them have been taking a little over 20 days now. I think it's safe to say that they're not going to arrive, right? On the other hand, won't my customers get some kind of notification that it got seized? I always thought mail never really just gets "lost"..?
SECONDLY MAN (AND MAKE SURE YOU REALLY TAKE NOTE OF THIS) You are shipping for THE number ONE "red flagged" country. No matter what country you are shipping too, mail for the NL is scrutinized MUCH more heavily then mail coming in from say England as your country is a known drug source country...Shit, 90% of the time people travel there is because of the drug tourism. Everyone that has spent time on these forums know the ordering from the vendors in the NL have the least likely chance of getting through. Therefore, NL vendors have to have amazing, over the top stealth and pretty much all the big time MDMA/XTC dealers in the NL are famous for their amazing packaging and most of the time their packages will arrive with absolutely no issues.
Yep I'm fully aware of that. Like I said earlier, I've ordered from a few of those guys and I was indeed impressed by the creativity and the professionalism. It took me quite some preparation efforts to get the proper materials and logistics together to do it that way, hence it's so darn disappointing to see that it doesn't even work (yet). I'll see if I can get a bit more intel on that :-)
If all these other vendors are doing it from the NL then so can you :)
That makes me feel warm inside, thank you :)
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it could also be that you shipped to a buyer who was flagged. they check the package and all subsequent packages from vendor are flagged.