Thanks for letting me know!!!

Bought seeds from Cindy and they all came to me very well packaged and no problems with germination. They all did great!

kousa said: Bought seeds from Cindy and they all came to me very well packaged and no problems with germination. They all did great!

Me too!

Cindy's seeds are top notch and I love her choice of unique crosses.

I split off the pollen talk to make a new thread which will make it much easier for folks to find the info on freezing and shipping pollen. The thread can be found here...
The thread "Pollen - Freezing and Shipping ideas" in Daylilies forum

I have bought a lot (réally.. a lót!) of seeds on the LA last year and this year.
All were sent in padded envelopes and all arrived without any problems whatsoever.
Some took as long as 2 weeks to arrive, some, like Judy's (see the entry at the top of this thread) take just 5 days to get here

Last year I sent a big envelope with seeds to the Seed Bank and, yes, I had to fill in a customs form, but they too arrived without any problem.

I live in a small country, so I'm used to buying stuff in China (I ordered 500 centrifuge tubes this evening for less than $10 on AliExpress ), DL's from a nursery in Germany and Irisses from France and I am used to pay for shipping.
I just calculate how much shipping is divided by the number of items, and decide if it feels ok



Mayo

The seeds I won on the auction are at italian customs. I should have told to the seller to use an envelope and not a small box. Boxes get checked, envelopes don't. Or at least it often goes this way. I got a lot of seeds from the international program of AHS and got them in a common envelope, no problem at all. I know sellers are worried about their reputation and choose a fool-proof method to ship, I should tell in advance. A small envelope costs less, too. I only hope they won't destroy seeds or ask me too much money.

I am so sorry, Sabrina. I hope they will let the seeds pass and get to you safely.

Italy is a member of the European Union, so the same rules should be applied in Italy as in the Netherlands.
There is absolutely NO reason to destroy seeds coming from the US, so why would they do that?


Mayo

In all this years, buying from several parts of the world, I learned that italian customs works with random rules. I see the packet is at the international dispatch center in Milan and it's there since yesterday. To me it's a long time so surely they are inspecting it. And from now on I can't be sure of its destiny.

Ok let's wait when and if they'll arrive and I can tell you if everything is fine!

cybersix said:Ok let's wait when and if they'll arrive and I can tell you if everything is fine!

Hope so! Let us know...

I am so sorry, Sabrina.

I sent seeds to Japan one time and they were confiscated. A notice was sent to the person I was sending them to and the seeds were destroyed. (This was years ago.)

Often the problem is that the name of the plant is not adequate for various reasons on the package. If the name isn't written exactly as on their list of allowed plant seeds then they're liable to question the shipment. Maureen, who sends the AHS seeds, knows what to put on the customs sticker. In some countries the number of seeds or weight of seeds makes a difference to the paperwork required also.

I need to wait at least monday to know what's going on. Then I will let you know!
Sorry for your experience.

Sue I got seeds from Maureen, they were sent in a simple envelope like the ones you would use for a letter, they were in a postcard folded in two. Cheap, quick and no problems with customs. Fingers crossed.

So the seeds from Maureen did not have a customs sticker?

sooby said:So the seeds from Maureen did not have a customs sticker?

I wrote to Maureen asking her about this. I just couldn't imagine that she would deliberately circumvent customs in such a manner, but she told me that because her first mailings to Italy had been reported as "gone missing", she had, indeed, slipped a few packets of seeds inside a Christmas card and mailed them like that. She told me that this mailing (without a customs declaration) was an anomaly and is not how mailings are sent out to international recipients of seed donations.