bigv its a good thread. Thanks for starting it!
But many people on the forum are new and don't really know until they read threads and order for themselves. Yes, there is a bit of a brain wash syndrome about the "most popular"seed banks and a bit of naivety regarding following each other into buying with the hyped banks. But I wouldn't be too tough on them. They learn from reading threads like this one. We all learn from each other here.
I keep reading about the fact that there is hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail flowing into the US and that's why it is hard to intercept the seeds that we order. I fully understand that and I realize that there is LOTS of mail flowing into the US.
But my post earlier in this thread was more about Holland than anything. Yes, there are lots of letters flowing in... BUT, I fully believe that its pretty easy for the post to pin-point letters from certain countries (lets say Holland) probably by scanning post marks in high volume sorting centers (New York) and then redirecting them to an area where they are opened for contraband. Now, normally they could only take a percentage of mail because of the large scale of mail flowing, but in the case of Holland its a very small country (bout the size of Delaware) and I bet the scale of mail coming from there to US is really not that big. So, my guess is they can redirect all mail from there and probably open all of it if they wanted to. And as I said in my early post, Holland is very tolerant and thus has developed all sorts of felonious shit (Ecstasy and LSD manufacture on large scale, trafficking in narcotics of all forms, child porn, DVD and CD piracy, legal prostitution, moving money from illegal activities, Mafia activities). When you add all of this up, I would think the US probably would intercept most everything except purely flat letters. And the purely flat letters probably go through sorters that would crush seeds.
We were talking about using a T-Shirt or Cap as an improved hiding strategy. And what I was saying in that earlier post is that Holland is not known for selling apparel or logo branded stuff. In the case of France, I would think all sorts of Americans order stuff like that (hell, Louis Vuitton & Coco Chanel alone) and it comes into New York with such frequency that the US really can't open it all. But Holland is not known for apparel so if a shirt or cap would come through (even in a plain package) it probably would raise even more suspicion. A CD case would cause piracy concerns so it would also probably be opened (not all, but much of it I would think).
I mentioned just flying to where you can buy the beans but now that this thread has developed I see that ordering from a seed bank not in Holland is the way to go. And that is how I will roll from here on out. I do thank everyone for adding to his thread for I would still be pissed and wondering what to do if not for the posters here. This whole forum is way cool. I learn so much stuff on here!
Stick
