I recently decided to send a bottle of Scotch to a friend as a gift. Guess what? You Can’t Do That. FedEx, UPS and the USPS all refuse to accept packages containing alcoholic beverages. FedEx and UPS both said that a license is required to ship alcoholic beverages. The USPS simply says that alcoholic beverages are “non-mailable.”
The law varies from state to state. I knew that Massachusetts regulated direct shipments from wineries and other merchants, but I did not realize that said regulations also apply to personal shipments. Actually, it’s possible that they don’t, and that FedEx and UPS simply refuse to ship them at all because they don’t want to be in the business of figuring out which shipments to allow.
*sigh*
Both FedEx and UPS had the alcohol policy for a couple of years now. You can’t ship alcohol via USPS period – it has to do with interstate transport of alcohol and related antiquated laws.
You can ALWAYS ship lava lamps without licenses. Glass bottles, liquid inside. Or call them fermented vinegar/grain juice. As long as the package is prepacked and prepaid with a shipper account (cost nothing to sign up), most shipper won’t question it. I find that Fedex at FedexKinko’s is more lax than UPS. YMMV.