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beam expanders illegal in the UK?

LASERSA INLONDON

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I've bought a sanwu 7w striker with beam expander. The packaged arrived , marked 'repackaged' by DHL, paid 16gbp for vat, and inside was the striker, fully assembled, no box, and clearly missing the beam expander attachment.

So, did i miss something? Are beam expanders now flagged at customs and removed de-facto when entering the UK?

Thank you.
 





Encap

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Nothing about a beam expander is illegal anywhere.

Did you ask the seller if it, the beam expander, was in the same package?

Either way, report it missing to the seller. See what the seller says.
 
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I'm more surprised the laser got through. It is likely that the BE was not sent, or is in another package. A BE is just a telescope, so they aren't illegal anywhere in the world.
 

CurtisOliver

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No beam expanders are not illegal in the UK. I’ve had a package containing two variable expanders, I paid customs and that was it. Just contact Sanwu stating the problem and they will accommodate you.
 

Benm

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A beam expander is just like a telescope or binocular (or half one of the latter) so no problem to import anywhere really.

It could have fallen out of the original packaging when damaged in shipping and the they still decided you to send you the rest of the content, these things sometimes happen wilt postal services.

If you trust the vendor, take some pictures of what you received to compare to what he sent out, it should be quite clear if something has been repackaged by a postal service somewhere in the chain.
 
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DHL would not remove anything...all my GB lasers from JETLASERS had DHL tape 'INSPECTED' and that was, I guess, enough because out of ~100 pcs / ` (10 orders) none were ever touched.. AFAIK the DHL guy was (also) working for JL..'in house' shipping agent myb? weird tho .. JL never wanted me to use DHL for returns/repairs.. they wanted USPS/EMS..
 

Benm

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Not wanting to use DHL can have it's reasons... For me, for example, when DHL tries to deliver something when i'm not at home means i'll have to collect it from their depot, halfway across town. In moderate traffic that could take me an hour or so to do.

Using the 'regular' postal service / ems will deposit the package to a postal shop about 10 minutes drive away and with more practical opening hours as well.

This has nothing to do with how packages are inspected by customs, afaik they basically are all subject to the same procedures regardless of the carrier. They check shipments for prohibited items but mostly for goods that have a value which requires you to pay VAT and/or import duties on them.

With a return shipment i doubt that'd be a problem though, you could essentially declare the content of the package to be a 'broken flashlight' with a (scrap metal) value of $1 - and that's probably more or less true too.
 




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