[zaichev]

I'm shipping overnight in a well packed box.

They always ask, either, "Are there any liquids or perishables in here?" or "What's in the box?"

If I say, "Two live fish" are they going to give me problems? I mean, I'm pretty sure they can't say no that my university post office, but if they do, I'll just go to the main one downtown.

My main concern is that I DON'T want them to put "live fish" on the box. I have "Extremely fragile: take care" stickers on it, however.

 

[MrVampire181]

No. Do NOT. It will cause more harm than good.

Fragile etc. are ok. I sometimes mark my boxes as fragile but for the most part I leave them blank.

 

[zaichev]

Are there any legal issues? For example, if under X-ray they see it is a liquid, can they just throw out my box and my fish?!

What should I tell them instead? I thought about maybe telling them, "Some really, really fragile blown glass, and an expensive candle" so maybe it'd be okay to ask about the temperature expected.

 

[MrVampire181]

With USPS it's 100% legal to ship live fish and liquids provided they are packed correctly. However, I do not think it's anyone's concern what's in the box. You can say anything you want really. I doubt they'll shake the box or anything. The problem with telling them there's fish in the box is that they'll put the fish near an AC or heat vent depending on weather or cause delays if the workers are not familiar with policy. Most transhippers leave their boxes blank.

 

[EvilVOG]

I had been marking my fish as live fish, but i think i may stop marking them that way for the reasons mentioned above.

However i have had one that was marked live fish work to my advantage, after it got slightly lost in shipping a postal employee made a special effort to get it directly into the hands of the person i shipped to instead of leaving it where they normally drop packages.

 

[Cattitude]

I've had both live fish and live tarantulas shipped to me, and both boxes were marked "fragile" and "this side up" but nothing about live anything. Both boxes were carefully handed to me by the couriers - upside down. Thankfully it didn't make a difference to the "contents".