Went onto Mr. Snuff just now. It geoblocks me saying they’re not available in Ireland. Via a VPN it appears it no longer delivers to Ireland as it’s not listed as a shipping country.
Strange, as I successfully ordered from them just a few short weeks ago.
So this is a major problem. The only snuff stockists in Ireland only sell one type of snuff (literally one product) and in small 5g tins.
Would there be any problem in me buying from Mr. Snuff to deliver to my mother who lives in the UK. And then getting her to post it to me in Ireland as a parcel?
And if this wouldn’t work, what are my options? I don’t want to be without my snuff.
Yes. And I have a UK bank account so they’d have no way of knowing I’m in Ireland. Only thing is work doesn’t allow me to go back often so she’d have to post it. Just wondering whether it would be seized. As it would be being sent as a personal item, not commercially once she sent it.
Thanks. Looks like Toque works. Same with snuff.me. Hopefully anyway. I was thinking the law had suddenly changed as Mr. Snuff delivered to me two or three weeks ago.
This has to be the third post I’ve seen over the weekend about geoblocking customers.
More surprisingly, I can’t see any announcements or statements from MrS about this rather sudden change (even if it was expected to them, it seems customers weren’t as informed.
They would have done well to launch an email to known customers and/or a blog page explaining what has changed.
This is less about criticism of MrS, more about keeping customers in the loop.
Imagine if a fortnight before they were due to change, they’d sent emails out saying due to unforeseen circumstances they were having to stop orders to xyz countries. Get your orders in quick.
A good number of people would’ve stocked up, I’d suggest.
There appears to be a good reason for living in the UK after all – and that’s the availability of snuff (at least for now). Do you know anyone in Northern Ireland if your mother can’t help?
It seems puzzling that overseas customers are geo-blocked without apology or even an explanation. Perhaps I’m missing something here but have you tried other sites? This one claims that availability is restricted to certain North American states only.
If you live in Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington or Wisconsin, we are unfortunately not allowed to sell tobacco to you. It’s forbidden with online sales of tobacco in these states.
We post to all world wide destinations using First Class Royal Mail post. Your shipping cost is automatically calculated on our website and is based on the weight of the products ordered. Please note, postage pricing is subject to change, and is in line with the current Royal Mail prices
It all seems to be up in the air. Personally, I think it’s attached to them selling chewing tobacco and chewing tobacco being completely banned here. They’ve overreacted, imo, because nasal snuff is not a problem. It’s even sold by a tobacconist in Dublin (but very poor selection and pricey, though fortunately it’s a menthol as I love menthol ones).
I got a couple of tins from Dublin to keep me going. I’ve plenty of snuff for now, it was just a lot of it was Indian. I like Indian ones but I find they keep me awake whereas English ones don’t.
Unfortunately we had to stop selling to Ireland due to the high number of returns from customs. We are trying to sort this out by joining an EU wide tax system called IOSS which should smooth things out, but until then I am sorry but Ireland is off our list of countries we can sell to.
I am not sure we have got the geo-blocking quite right - I think it feels a bit aggressive and there is not much explanation as to why. The reasoning was that it was unfair to let a customer go through the purchasing process only to find, right at the end when they try to pay, that the destination country is blocked.
Thanks Jonny. Hopefully you’ll be able to include Ireland again soon as your store is great.
It might also help grow your customer base if you had an option for claiming the tax back. Once it passes through Irish customs, we have to pay tax here too even though we’ve already paid UK taxes at point of purchase.
Ireland the the UK have a double taxation treaty so we shouldn’t be paying twice.
