@ibeforej wrote:
So, I received a shipment of what was supposed to be 140 comic magazines from the UK to North Carolina via GSP. The comics were shipped in a box with zero packing material, which caused further damage to the magazines. Seller's feedback showed that this has happened before, but when I questioned my dissatisfaction with the packing job, the seller actually blamed GSP for repacking the box, which I found very odd.
Later that day, I count the comics and see that I have 10 less than what was advertised. Contact the seller again and he/she states "In our experience, the GSP team will repackage some larger items to make sure that they are more generously under the weight limits of international couriers, in which case they will discard of some of a packages contents."
So, this seller is saying that GSP will remove actual product to get the package under a certain weight? Wouldn't that be an enormously big problem for a shipping program to remove part of what a buyer has purchased? Is this really happening or am I in the Twilight Zone right now...?
I have bought many items from the UK with GSP.
I have never had any of my packages even opened for inspection during shipment. They have always been shipped on in the original packaging, which I can tell has not been opened, with the GSP shipping labels applied in addition to the original shipping labels (usually over top of them). I believe the terms of the service say that they *may* open, inspect, and/or repack, but in my experience this has never happened, so I doubt that it is very common.
Removing some contents of the package at random, without notice, would be unethical and illegal. It would be stealing. The GSP may have to decline to ship some items internationally, if they aren't allowed to be imported to the destination country, but in that case, they disallow the entire shipment and refund the buyer in full.
So I would so that no, your seller is trying to pass the buck.
As far as the weight limit goes ... I did a google search, and found a thread discussing the weight of packaged comic books, and found that 5 oz was considered generous for a single comic, so 140 comics might weight 700 oz or 43.75 lbs. That is 19.85 kg. So the package weight would be permissible, as long as the dimensions of the box were acceptable.
For the UK GSP program: "The item must weigh no more than 30kg and be no larger than 125,000 cm³, and no longer than 120cm on the longest side. It should be worth no more than £2,000. "
