Shipping to Ireland (updated Jan 2024)
Update (JAN 2024): We have resumed shipping to Ireland from Jan 2024 onwards, and will monitor the parcel rejection rates by the Irish customs office.
FEB 2022: We are regrettably unable to send packages to Ireland due to its rogue customs office and An Post's unreliable delivery standards.
If you're an Irish customer with an outstanding order with us, please reach out via email (reply to your order confirmation email) and we will help you with your order.
Since July 2021, packages that were sent to Ireland began experiencing unusually high rejection rates by the Irish customs office. The official reason for rejecting the packages was that the customs declaration on the packages were incomplete. However, that proved to not be the case.
We have since been working with our shipping partner, but no solution could be found, because An Post and the Irish customs office have been unable to tell us the exact issue(s) our customs declarations had.
Vague "issues" with no clear pattern
Ever since the customs rejection issue began, no clear pattern could be found. Approximately half of the packages we sent to Ireland end up being rejected by the customs office, while the other half were accepted and delivered successfully. We ran excruciating analyses on the packages, but found no clear pattern or reason for the Irish customs office to reject some (but not all) of our packages.
We considered if this was an issue with EU's then-new VAT system, but found no evidence to support this. Our EU VAT (IOSS) was properly registered (in Ireland no less), and no other EU country had the same rejection rates that Ireland had.
Lack of response from An Post
Our shipping partner has been trying to reach out to An Post to investigate this odd package rejection issue since July 2021, but have been met with less than enthusiastic response rates.
The most concrete response we could get from one of An Post's Customer Services representatives was a "guess" that the enamel pins we're sending are considered dangerous items. If this were true (and we don't think this is true because of how absurd this sounds), it doesn't explain why half of our packages containing "dangerous" items still got past the customs office and got delivered successfully.
Wider systemic issue at hand
Other online retailers have also met with the same issue since July 2021. Based on what we could gather, the signs were the same: there were no clear patterns for the rejection of packages, and no other EU nation rejects packages at the same erratic rate as Ireland does.
Many theories float around seller forums (note: speculation only began because the Irish customs office and An Post were both unwilling to explain why packages get rejected): Ireland's being nationalistic and randomly rejects overseas packages; An Post and the Irish customs office are having a political difference and unwilling to work the issue out; and so on.
The unfortunate reality is that small retailers like us have been fronting double (and sometimes triple) the shipping costs just to resend packages to our Irish customers — all with the hopes that the new package will somehow make it past the rogue Irish customs offices.
At this point, we can't see an end to Ireland's delivery problem. With delivery costs rising sharply (even as the global pandemic situation gradually improves), we have made the painful decision to stop shipping to Irish addresses from 4 Feb 2022 onwards.
If you're an Irish customer with an outstanding order with us, please reach out via email (reply to your order confirmation email) and we'll help you with your order.