Apparently the US Department of DefenseWar thinks that they can order non-US citizens not resident in the USA to cease and desist from mailing things.
Uh…
Hilarity of the items involved aside, the gall of the US military postal service to give orders to civilians not under their command and not even of their nation is shocking.
She’s doing business internationally and failed to comply with local regulations and courier terms of use for her products’ destination.
There’re agreements that govern how mail transits from Canada to the US and agreements that govern how the US moves mail to military bases in host countries. To facilitate the hundreds of different permutations of local laws USPS provides a portal where you can check if what you intend to mail is permitted.
She should have known. The military member would have given her their address including “APO AE 09837.” She should have then visited the USPS APO restrictions portal and typed in “09837” whereupon she would have seen the following:
At that point she would have known that sending one of her products to that address was illegal in the destination country she was doing business in and a violation of her couriers terms.
She didn’t do that, Bahrain notified the recipient (technically the US Military) and asked them to notify the sender, and they did.
It’s her choice to support APOs, but if she does support APOs she’s doing business all across the world and is subject to the local restrictions. If she just wants to deal with the US and Canada and not have to deal with other countries’ customs than she shouldn’t support APOs.
It’s illegal to mail someone alcohol in the US. It’s also illegal to mail someone alcohol in Bahrain. Regardless of if someone orders alcohol online it’s still illegal to send alcohol. If you disregard that and mail alcohol anyway then you are breaking the law.
Though it’s legal to mail sex toys in the US, it is illegal to mail sex toys to Bahrain–even if to a US military base. Regardless of if someone orders sex toys online it’s still illegal to mail sex toys to Bahrain. If you disregard that and mail sex toys to Bahrain anyway then you are breaking the law.
I stand corrected. She certainly could have determined this was illegal. But as far as I know, it is still illegal for someone to order prohibited items online, and it seems the military could stop a lot of those things on their side if they enforced the laws with their employees, as well.