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Old March 9, 2018   #14
cwavec
Tomatovillian™
 
Join Date: May 2016
Location: PA - 5b
Posts: 92
Default I hope you are right

@JosephineRose

I hope you are right. I do remember seeing something like that but am
sure that elsewhere they say you can't.

This is surely an indication of how convoluted the process is.

One thing I do want to ask is whether you have received the permit.
In my case, although for a mail permit, it was issued in one day along
with the labels.

My case was much more complicated because I was ordering online
from a French retailer (Graines Baumaux) who does not ship to the
US. In any case it would have been nearly impossible to explain to
a retailer all the requirements for documentation and expect them
to be able to follow through. I had to have Baumaux ship to a mail
forwarder in England and then I separately sent a package of documents
to the forwarder and had them combine the necessary contents of the
two packages while discarding all the advertising and bonus items.
It was also necessary to get them to place the green and yellow label
and another label on the outside, etc., etc. Then it went to DHL. The
tracking was inadequate in that customs grabbed the package and
sent it straight to USDA instead of letting DHL "deliver" it. Once it
was in the hands of USDA things went smoothly. They passed it
right away and sent it on in a prepaid mailer I had included with
the documents. DHL never did figure out what happened and a few
days later emailed me a bogus "proof of delivery". I didn't care
because I had already received my seeds. Needless to say, this was
all very expensive.

Whew!!!!!

Please let us know what your experiences are. As I said, I am not
particularly a fan of this program but I do have to acknowledge that
it worked for me. I also suspect that if you have an acquaintance in
another country with whom you want to exchange seeds, it could
be possible to winnow all this down to a point where it might
actually be fairly sensible. That of course is for incoming exchanges.
I have no idea what the procedure would be in the other direction.
cwavec is offline   Reply With Quote