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USPS won't honor my claim because the iPhone "is a prohibited item." Is that right?

macaddict23 said:
Well, on the Customs Form, aren't you suppose to be truthful with the description?
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Sure you are, but that has little to do with the issue at hand except to show the USPS you shipped something that you are not supposed to ship giving them an EXCUSE to deny your claim and make your life hell.

If you are sending something "illegal" you might not want to advertise that fact (had you investigated before hand you would have known - once again, ignorance of the law is no excuse). Like sending drugs inside a stuffed animal. Would you write "stuffed animal full of drugs" on the customs declaration form or just "stuffed animal?"

Hopefully you will find a way to collect your insurance based on it not even getting there, but remember, you're dealing with the federal government and the fact you told them (by way of the form) that the item was not a permitted item might be a "loophole" for them to not pay you. There might be fine print somewhere saying "insurance is void for non-permitted items whether they reach the destination or get lost en-route." You could always sue them I guess. Good luck fighting the feds.
 
USPS insurance claim result

I had the same thing happen and when I appealed, I was successful. My reasoning for the appeal was that importing cell phones wasn't illegal and cell phones do not impose much danger when shipped, so if it was true that customs wouldn't accept it because it was a "transceiver", they would be required to either return it to sender at senders cost or treat as abandoned depending on what was marked on the shipping label. If that didn't happen, then the package was either lost or stolen. I would probably recommend shipping the iphone box and accessories first class and then bubble wrap the phone by itself and put used cell phone as a description. I believe the "transceiver" prohibition was back during the cold war and although maybe it's still on some documents, it's not really enforced by customs as if it's only being enforced with iPhones and not other phones, network cards, and a plethora of devices, then that sounds a little sketchy.
 
Uh, he clearly stated what the shipped item was and they allowed him not only to ship it, but insure it. They are bound to honor that claim. It wasn't as if he disguised it as a CD and then turned around and said, oh wait, it's a $500 iPhone.
 
Bawstun said:
Uh, he clearly stated what the shipped item was and they allowed him not only to ship it, but insure it. They are bound to honor that claim. It wasn't as if he disguised it as a CD and then turned around and said, oh wait, it's a $500 iPhone.
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That's not how it works. The USPS will allow you to send whatever you want (as long as it's not on their list of restricted items) however, they don't control whether or not the delivering country allows it or not. If Russia prohibits it, it's not the USPS' fault. It's ALWAYS up to the shipper to know what is and isn't restricted. That's not up to the USPS whatsoever.
 
Anonymous Freak said:
Russian customs if rife with corruption. I used to work for Intel, in a department that often had to send equipment to a subsidiary in Russia.

RAM and CPUs would go missing at least 10% of the time. The only way we could get them back was to have our Russian office contact customs with a "This box was tampered with, and contains government-declared sensitive material. Because of this tampering, we must report this to the FSB (the successor to the KGB) and the U.S. FBI." Invariably, the material would show up a day or two later, with a lame excuse of "stuck in clearance" or some such.

Not having such a well-connected company as Intel, with connections into the right bureaucratic channels will likely make your theft impossible to trace.

In short, this crap happens so often, it's on the USPS's list of "will not insure" items. (In my case at Intel, though, we'd see $50,000 worth of stuff disappear from a shipment. And even with the treats of FSB/FBI involvement, we wouldn't get it back all the time.)
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I have the exact same problem, but I'm the addresse located in Russia.
What I'm going to do is calling Customs and interantional mail sorting facility and pretend I am a head of security department of some government entity or big company and try to threat them with FSB involvement.

I've tried to contact you via PM but haven't found the PM button.
 
colingale1 said:
I had the same thing happen and when I appealed, I was successful. My reasoning for the appeal was that importing cell phones wasn't illegal and cell phones do not impose much danger when shipped, so if it was true that customs wouldn't accept it because it was a "transceiver", they would be required to either return it to sender at senders cost or treat as abandoned depending on what was marked on the shipping label. If that didn't happen, then the package was either lost or stolen. I would probably recommend shipping the iphone box and accessories first class and then bubble wrap the phone by itself and put used cell phone as a description. I believe the "transceiver" prohibition was back during the cold war and although maybe it's still on some documents, it's not really enforced by customs as if it's only being enforced with iPhones and not other phones, network cards, and a plethora of devices, then that sounds a little sketchy.
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How exactly did you appeal and which documents you supplied?
 
ai777 said:
What I'm going to do is calling Customs and interantional mail sorting facility and pretend I am a head of security department of some government entity or big company and try to threat them with FSB involvement.
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political-pictures-muammar-al-gaddafi-global-facepalm.jpg
 
farmermac said:
How stupid do you have to be to write iPhone on a package headed to the most corrupt country in the world?
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Where did you read that anybody wrote 'iPhone'?
I always ask US senders to write 'cell phone', 'used gadget/pda'
always sucessful

only 'MP3 Player' was not successful
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

TB07-NJ said:
macaddict23 said:
Here's what's on the USPS' site about banned items in Russia: http://pe.usps.com/text/imm/ps_013.htm
Sounds pretty vague to me. It doesn't specifically say "phones" or "cell phones."

I will send my letter of appeal in a few days. It's better than giving up.
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Your iPhone (or any cellphone) is CLEARLY considered a transceiver,

A transceiver is a device that has both a transmitter and a receiver which are combined and share common circuitry or a single housing. If no circuitry is common between transmit and receive functions, the device is a transmitter-receiver. The term originated in the early 1920s. Technically, transceivers must combine a significant amount of the transmitter and receiver handling circuitry.

On a mobile telephone or other radiotelephone, the entire unit is a transceiver, for both audio and radio.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transceiver

However you should DEFINITELY not give up because you could simply get lucky.
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But WHAT is it receiving or transmitting?
 
w00t951 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

But WHAT is it receiving or transmitting?
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Seriously? OK, I'll go along with it.

When you talk to someone on the phone you are transmitting and receiving a radio frequency (RF) signal. A cell phone is nothing but a 2-way radio, aka "Transceiver." Other then the frequency it uses and the type of modulation it is simply a "two way radio" virtually no different then a police radio, CB radio, Ham radio, walkie-talkie. Even the cordless phone you use in your house is a transceiver as it also sends AND receives a radio frequency signal.

Trans(mitter)(re)ceiver = transceiver
 
TB07-NJ said:
Seriously? OK, I'll go along with it.

When you talk to someone on the phone you are transmitting and receiving a radio frequency (RF) signal. A cell phone is nothing but a 2-way radio, aka "Transceiver." Other then the frequency it uses and the type of modulation it is simply a "two way radio" virtually no different then a police radio, CB radio, Ham radio, walkie-talkie. Even the cordless phone you use in your house is a transceiver as it also sends AND receives a radio frequency signal.

Trans(mitter)(re)ceiver = transceiver
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Th funny thing is that Russia never imposed any restrictions on consumer devices like cell phones.
USPS is pulling this 'restriction' out of thin air.
 
Last edited:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

TB07-NJ said:
w00t951 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

But WHAT is it receiving or transmitting?
Click to expand...

Seriously? OK, I'll go along with it.

When you talk to someone on the phone you are transmitting and receiving a radio frequency (RF) signal. A cell phone is nothing but a 2-way radio, aka "Transceiver." Other then the frequency it uses and the type of modulation it is simply a "two way radio" virtually no different then a police radio, CB radio, Ham radio, walkie-talkie. Even the cordless phone you use in your house is a transceiver as it also sends AND receives a radio frequency signal.

Trans(mitter)(re)ceiver = transceiver
Click to expand...

*note sarcasm dripping from every syllable*
 
The item description makes a big difference in how probable it is that someone might steal it or customs would confiscate it. You can describe the item in many truthful ways that could improve your chances of it making it to its final destination. "used telephone" is a valid description although customs of some countries may prefer more detail.

As an aside, if you were to place the iPhone into "airplane mode" and then turn it off one could argue that it is no longer a functioning transceiver. This basically turns it into something like a PDA or media player without any connectivity.

Taking it apart into its components could also make it not a functioning transceiver or even technically a phone. One could then possibly declare it as something like "used electronic parts".

I make no claims or guarantees as to the legality or usefulness of these ideas. This is just for the open discussion of hypothetical possibilities.
 
macaddict23 said:
Thanks for the info. My thing is, what average Joe, or eBay seller, would know of such a list of restrictions? There are 195 countries in the world. 196 including us here in the U.S. Everytime I sell an item internationally, I'm suppose to be aware of the prohibited items for all 195 countries??
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The thing is, eBay gives you the ability to engage in international commerce even if you haven't the requisite skillset and market intelligence to be doing so.

I'm sorry you lost money, but yes....as the person who initiated the transaction, the responsibility to know the risks lies solely with you.
 
The iPhone is NOT a restricted item...

Okay the same thing happened to me however my "empty box" was returned. I followed my package via USPS Tracking and it passed customs with flying colors and continued on its way to its destination. Somewhere between customs and delivery to the buyers destination the iPhone was removed from the box and a non Russian customs agent wrote "item is being returned because the weights are different than what was specified on the USPS declaration. Sure the weights are different once the contents of the box are removed, LOL. I'm afraid USPS Insurance is going to get stuck with this one and it will be up to them to investigate what happened. Most likely the individual in Russia responsible for the last leg of the delivery is going to be in the hot seat for this one. Not my problem. Rest assured ladies and gentlemen the insurance company handling USPS deliveries will be coughing up the money on this one and they're not going to be happy about it.

I'll keep y'all informed ;)
 
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