Ship axe to France.

[porkpie]

This is directly from Fedex terms and conditions:
Shipments (packages or freight) containing all or part of the following items are limited to a maximum declared value of US$500:
Guitars and other musical instruments that are more than 20 years old, and customized or personalized musical instruments.

I stripped out all the other exceptions. Here is the link for the full text. They do not offer "insurance" but they do cover for the declared value in case of loss. Maybe Bob's friend at fedex can clear up what that means exactly. It certainly has me confused.

http://www.fedex.com/us/services/terms/us.html#liabilitylimits

[bobzilla]

Pork, this statement....

"Guitars and other musical instruments that are more than 20 years old, and customized or personalized musical instruments."

seems to be floating in mid-air, like there should be something else along with it to make it completely make sense.

When I read that part of your post, it made me think there should be another sentence before it or after it tomake it congruous to the rest of what you atated/posted.

Am I off-mark here?

[peterdryan]

The full bullet is:

F.  Shipments (packages or freight) containing all or part of the following items are limited to a maximum declared value of US$500:
:
:
13.  Guitars and other musical instruments that are more than 20 years old, and customized or personalized musical instruments.


This agrees with the statement made to me by the FedEx CSR that the maximum "declared value" of a vintage guitar shipped within the USA via Air delivery is $500 USD

[bobzilla]

Thanx again Pete, now it makes sense.

[bobzilla]

(well I guess it did make sense in the first place but, that helped.

[chazmo]

Bob, you might want to investigate DHL as well.  They have a strong presence in Europe.  Wolfgang chose to use DHL to ship from Germany to here...  Just FYI.  I'm not sure about the insurance implications either.

[peterdryan]

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound...

So, I called DHL and spoke with a very nice young lady who told me the following:

There are no limitations on insurance value for either domestic or international shipments of "vintage, rare, or hard-to-replace guitars" via DHL.

The catch with DHL is that if you are shipping domestically and want insurance, you have to provide documentation proving the value of the item being shipped.

I don't know if that is also true for international shipments, too, or not.

When I was told that, we were talking about domestic shipping and I didn't think to ask later on.

If you are shipping internationally and the value of the item is over $2500 US, you must fill out and provide DHL with a "Shipper's Export Declaration" form (which can be found at http://www.aesdirect.gov)

This form (apparently) contains things like:

- a declaration of the actual value of the item being shipped
- the type of item being shipped
- a full description of the item being shipped
- etc, etc, etc

[bobzilla]

Thanx again Pete and I think it's best that if we do use these carriers that we actually go through the trouble of adhering to their guidelines because, one could imagine, they'd look for the tiniest loophole to get out of it, if something diod go wrong.

I've only been on the receiving end of Int'l shipments and so far... so good.
I didn't have much insight into being the Int'l shipper.