Model Railway Forum

I have been trying to get some replacement Li-Po batteries for my grandsons RC car. Although a selection of spares can be obtained on Amazon where the car was bought, batteries are not currently available, I have been trawling around and can see the exact replacements I need through sellers on AliExpress. I can select the item priced in £s and read in the blurb that it can be shipped to the UK by the sellers own shipping method and even gives an ETA but as soon as I get to filling in the shipping details a note appears underneath saying the item can not be shipped to that region - Catch 22.

Now I know Royal Mail have put restrictions on what can be sent by mail which I presume is the final carrier that the sellers will be using. Although I have not gone through to the actual payment stage, I get the impression the site would not prevent that. So the question is would they ship regardless and I would just have to hope RM do not spot the item as prohibited and refuse to deliver?

Has anyone had a similar experience and kindly relate the outcome?

Richard

I suspect you are right Richard as like you say RM do prohibit the carriage of batteries around the UK network. I would say there may be two ways round this. One to see if the supplier will put something other than the word battery on the export paperwork eg electronic components (I bought a £200 mobile phone from China once and they put £30 mp3 player on the paperwork - saved me some import tax!). Alternatively can you specify a different carrier such as DHL or UPS?

Terry

If it is from the USA I would imagine RM will not be involved. Last thing I purchased from the USA came FedEx all the way.

Have you looked at eBay?

Thanks Terry and WTD

Terry was that shipment from AliExpress as I said I have not progressed from the shipping details which do not allow any means of specifying the carrier or to specify the goods for customs duty. I get the impression the next stage was simply to enter your payment details.

WTD was your order through the AliExpress US website? Out of interest I did try to change the region just to see which countries restricted the shipment of these items and it was a surprising large number including the USA.

Richard

Sorry I was just saying that buying from the USA often doesn’t entail Royal Mail at all. There are loads on eBay but probably the wrong sort.

Tis also a bit of a lottery, when buying from abroad, with Customs, as their random computer, selects which parcels to open. Friends of ours bought from usa, and sender kindly called items used, to avoid import duty. Having opened it, under the random checks, customs, were not best impressed, and held goods for weeks, until he paid up. Having worked for years for NCL, and National Freight corp, agree with WTD, that many other carriers, are quite happy to transport batteries. Where are they coming from.

I have tried Ebay lots of very similar types with nearly the same maH capacity but usually let down by the dimensions. The batteries with the car are 7.4V 1600maH LiPo the motor can pull 60A and with that capacity you get about 15mins run time losing a few maH capacity will shorten play time considerably. I could use higher capacity batteries but the battery compartment is quite small and would need some hacking to put something different in and would probably involve having to strap them in place without the cover not exactly ideal for playing on the beach with.

I noticed many of the Ebay versions were also coming from China so expect the same issue regarding final carrier, although when I looked into delivery many claimed to deliver into the UK but within the UK there were many regions they would not deliver to which seems odd if RM is the final carrier.

Richard

Singular battery shipments are governed by a plethora of regulations. Shipping them by Air isn't allowed in most cases. Sending them via Royal Mail and a number of other carriers is also not allowed.

I had problems with this when I wished to return the dongle that allows you to go through the pre-paid fast lanes in France and Spain without stopping. The company I used is actually in Germany!

I wasn't able to return the device and after much to-ing and fro-ing by email and discussions with a German national I know it seems the Bundespost doesn't allow batteries either. This is when I found about an international ban on batteries on planes that preceded by a lot of years the exploding Galaxy Note batteries.

Whilst there may be ways, as suggested in this thread, of mislabelling the contents do you really wish to be responsible for downing an aircraft?

Found one seller on AliExpress that was using a courier rather than by mail. Mind you the charge for delivery was over 4X the price per battery but again as soon as you get to entering the delivery details up pops the no delivery to this region message, you cannot win!

Richard