Shipping plastic/vinyl toys to Italy?

[Dewprincess]

I seem to remember reading something a while back about people having trouble shipping MLPs and other vinyl toys to Italy.  I have a lot of vinyl toys on ebay right now and received a question about whether I could ship them to Italy, and I wanted to ask on here to see if anyone knew if that was still an issue...

Edit:  I meant to post this in Trader Support...mods please move?

[ponylady]

I am going to bump this over to TS for you.

Italy has restrictions on toys and it if they are not wholly made of wood they are not allowed. But in that being said as long as you do not write "toy" on the customs form you should be good. I usually write "Horse Figure" or "Collectable Item". I have shipped there many times with no issues.

But it is known that Italian customs is about one of the worst. So if you want to absolutely try and protect yourself of a packing going missing, I suggest shipping Global Express as it is going to be the only way you are covered by Paypal and Ebay.

Also if you are uncomfortable in shipping to their period, I would just tell your buyer something to the effect of "I'm sorry, but due to customs laws I am unable to ship items to Italy." The law is the law, and people living there are probably already aware of it.

[Dewprincess]

Thanks!  I knew there was something that had been said to that effect but didn't remember the specifics.  I can't imagine that they would want to pay the amount for Global Express (it's a lot of Lady Lovely Locks dragons that's currently less than $10) and I haven't been selling long enough to be able to afford anything potentially going wrong. 

[SoSilver]

Hi.

Express or Priority are both good. Pretty expensive but good.

As for the plastic toys issue, never had a problem with that^_^

[spottedslug]

Is that new?

I've shipped toys to Italy MANY, MANY times over the years... like maybe in excess of 50 times! I always wrote, "Plastic toy pony" on it and I've never had an issue.

[ponylady]

I don' think it is a new law, as it has been in place for quite sometime.

http://pe.usps.com/imm_archive/html/imm_archive_2006/imm/immicl/immiclhk_012.html

[Galactica]

Wow- I didn't know that - good thing I've never had problems.  Just goes to show that you really should read the shipping prohibitions for a particular country before filling out your customs and shipping...