To ask you to check Royal Mails Dangerous Goods list before you post anything!

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Comprehensive list is here:

www.royalmail.com/personal/help-and-support/Tell-me-about-Restricted-Goods

If you send something in their Restricted Goods list, and Royal Mail notices it, they will confiscate, and sell at auction.

Case in point: £300 suspension unit for bicycle. "Disposed" of by Royal Mail, was confirmed to have been sent for auction. Full thread here:

singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/royal-mail-have-binned-my-rear-shock

The restricted items list is pretty much the same for every courier. You can't send pressurised canisters with any of them.

Obviously a lot of people do send canisters by mail and courier, including companies like Lakeland, but I'm not sure if they actually tackle the restriction properly or just hope that nobody catches them. I suspect the later.

A) Would you necessarily consider a bicycle part to be a gas canister? That implies that the sender would need be reasonably knowledgeable. (Not all shocks use compressed air)

2)The sending of gas canisters is not prohibited. The sending of compressed non flammable gas is. It would be perfectly reasonable to assume that as long as you let the air out it would be fine as is not compressed gas (as it is fine to fly with)

3. If the goods are too dangerous to transport surely they should be safely destroyed rather than crated up and sold for profit?

Knives are already on the restricted items list. The restriction being that you package them in accordance with RM instructions.

Here - I googled 'sending rear shock' and found this

How do I send my shock?

A. Wrap your shock in bubble wrap and put it in a jiffy bag, to prevent it getting damaged in transit. Enclose a returns address and contact telephone number. Also enclose a note explaining what the shock has been sent in for or fill in a service form and send to us, please clean your shock before sending it, thank you.

Service Form Once filled in , please print out and send to Mojo.
Note: It is best to send the shock with insurance cover, this can be done by sending it via the Royal Mail as recorded or special delivery or via a courier service. This also makes it a lot easier to track your shock when in transit.

So even companies who deal and repair these items are unaware of the issue.

The restricted items list is pretty much the same for every courier. You can't send pressurised canisters with any of them

It wasn't a pressurised canister. It was depressuried. And the list is not the same for every courier. Since RMs (very recent, and non publicised) tightening up of the regulations many other couriers are far more relaxed.

I was asked the contents of some parcels I was posting this week. Of course I didn't give random answers including a full description of a book I was sending a friend showing topless men holding cats. Nope. Not me.

I had fun

So hang on, Royal Mail can unilaterally change the rules without telling customers, then seize your property, then sell it and pocket the money?! Wow. That is astonishing.

There are posters all over the post office, Online and the Staff ALWAYS ask customers what is in their parcels. This has been since April (I think) this year. Royal Mail has not just changed the rules and not told anyone

I take at least 3/4 sacks to the post office daily and I am not asked what is in them as they know as a business that I know what is allowed and what is not.

It really is up to the sender to make sure what they are sending is allowed to be sent.

From the RM website.

*We reserve the right to refuse any other item banned by law or that in our opinion may be harmful or dangerous to our customers or employees. If you send dangerous goods and do not comply with the applicable terms and conditions and legal requirements then we may deal with the goods as we see fit including destroying or disposing of the relevant goods.

I've been posting toys with batteries for years & didn't know I had to research before sending 2xAA batteries.

Mind you at least I didn't ask my husband to send it, my friends husband was sent home from the post office with her Christmas parcels because he didn't know what was in it - and it's never been a requirement to tell them what is in every parcel before. I had no idea until I was asked.