Offensive Weapons Act 2019 - home delivery implications

[Will]

I find that DHL will ship. These company exclusions show us that they do not understand law, there is no other reason to prohibit blades.

[Matt Easton]

Parcelforce are fine with blades so long as they are safely packed. It states this on their website and I have numerous blades labelled as blades delivered by them per week, including scanned and cleared through Border Force.

[Will]

I've had two occasions of carriers accepting correctly labelled parcels only to later refuse delivery. This delays shipping by about 3 weeks as they are in no hurry to return the package to sender and not even notify sender. Both times i had to initiate the return once tracking info showed it was never sent. Strangely tracking will show movement but this is just electronic paperwork shown to be near destination.

[Jerry]

I looked into the Parcelforce site to clarify this situation. They operate different prohibition rules for non-account and account customers. For non-account customers bladed articles are prohibited, as per my previous post. For account customers different rules apply, extract below regarding bladed articles.

[Matt Easton]

Aha, well I do have an account - anyone can get one I believe.

[JordanPL]

I don’t have an account and whilst on holiday, walked into the Post Office at The Royal Hospital Chelsea, and posted two swords to Matt with no issues using Parcelforce Express24.

[Jerry]

How recent - since May this year? Sounds like they are not following their own rules.

And were you required to use age verification and outer package labelling etc?

[JordanPL]

About 10 days ago and nope didn’t need to provide any of the suggested but then again I look my age

[Jerry]

I guess Matt's address is a business address, which wouldn't apply, as he pointed out. The new law applies to residential addresses only.

[Matt Easton]

My address is a business address, though frankly it's clear that most post office and Parcelforce staff don't know or follow their own new rules yet. Neither do most auction houses or couriers.
When selling to UK customers I age verify everything and send with Parcelforce age verification service. All going smoothly so far.