B&H No Longer Shipping Chemistry

[Drew Wiley]

Given the number of lithium batteries out there that are either counterfeit or generic substandard, I'm surprised anyone is willing to handle anything related to them. Granted, my wife drives a Prius, and right at this moment I have a whole warehouse space behind me dedicated to cordless power tools, with lots and lots of lithium batteries. But I know who made them and where they came from. Otherwise, I won't even accept batteries for hazmat disposal. Houses burn down, people get their faces burned off. Counterfeit brand name batteries get mixed in with bulk genuine ones right at the Port. So I also refuse to sell bulk batteries too, just real-deal tamper-proof packaged ones. The flea market and equivalent web peddlers don't give a damn if your shop burns down or not. But prior to building dedicated in-house computer programs, we had to keep two entire cargo containers on hand just to store hazmat records of past sales, plus a full time librarian dealing with current sales. Sales per se, a whole other department. That included a lot of military and gov't business. But the whole point of my mini-diatribe at the moment is that if you're big enough, you get legally monitored and audited on a regular basis, and can't get away with the nonsense that fly-by-night operators do. At a certain point, the paperwork and headaches can get overwhelming and simply not worth it anymore.

[faberryman]

Well, apparently the headaches haven't gotten big enough, and the profit margins small enough, to deter B&H from selling and shipping them.

[Drew Wiley]

Put things in perspective and stop blaming B&H. It's like griping that Safeway doesn't carry as many flavors of ice cream as Baskin Robbins. There are plenty of sources of darkroom chemistry out there. But ground shipping and paying a surcharge for corrosive or hazmat labeling is just a fact of life, and mandated by the
parcel carriers themselves. You might also need to hook up with a commercial address or regional carrier office to pick certain up things that can't be residence
delivered. Heck, some chemicals can only be shipped by rail, from railhead to railhead. Others require special paperwork on file so that they're not being used to blend drugs. All kinds of weird things go on, Breaking Bad. In the meantime, I'll keep giving business to B&H for what they do offer.

[faberryman]

Last time I checked Safeway wasn't claiming that governmental regulations prevented them from carrying (and shipping) all the flavors of Baskin & Robbins ice cream.

[Leszek Vogt]

Ha, Safeway simply doesn't have space for Buds and other delectables. Hmmm, I never accused B&R to be great.

Les

[sepiareverb]

And yet the MSDS sheets list many of these chemicals as perfectly safe to ship by Ground or air. Were not going to get B&H to change, they have either decided not to give a sh1t about chemical photography or decided that the future will make it too difficult. But they seem willing to overlook that same level of difficulty when it comes to lithium batteries. Their prerogative. Too bad they have been such a major player for so long in this business, because they are of the size that their dropping of 75% of their volume is enough to make a difference for the manufacturers. But we can always start compounding our own as we have been told. Ilford and Kodak and FOMA will get over it.

[Willie]

This could be a misunderstanding or a particular UPS station causing the problem
Had a friend shipping a digital camera to me and he wanted to use UPS. Took it to the UPS Store and was told almost $60 - due to the Lithium battery with the camera.
A different UPS store was half that and did not worry about the battery.
He finally sent it US Postal Priority for just under $13.

Get different stations and different people on your account and you find very different practices. Could it be Henry has one of the guys who is more strict with the policy?

[henryp]

Beginning January 1, 2017, are you going to ship lithium batteries without equipment by air under the new UPS regulation, ship them by ground, or not ship them at all?

We're trying to figure out a way to open product boxes and install the batteries, which gives us more leeway. It's going to be imperfect at best and time consuming too I wager. As we get a clearer idea of what to do and how, we will say so.

[henryp]

Houses burn down, people get their faces burned off.

From last week:
Man Burned When E-Cig Explodes in Pants at New York's Grand Central Terminal

[henryp]

Heck, some chemicals can only be shipped by rail, from railhead to railhead. Others require special paperwork on file so that they're not being used to blend drugs. All kinds of weird things go on, Breaking Bad. In the meantime, I'll keep giving business to B&H for what they do offer.

Thank you.