About one refused item in every two is on this list. The shop that sold it to you had no reason to mention any of it.
Every month we have items stopped at the origin warehouse, and nearly all of them are things the customer had no way of knowing about. The seller does not ask where the parcel is going and the checkout page never mentions it.
Here is what will not go on an aircraft.
Aerosols of any kind. Deodorant, hairspray, spray paint, fixative, air freshener, insect spray. Pressurised cans are refused, and this is the commonest single reason an order is stopped.
Lighters, matches, camping gas, butane refills, and anything with a flame in it.
Large lithium batteries, and here the line is not obvious. A battery inside a device is usually fine. A loose battery, a power bank above a certain capacity, a spare pack for a power tool, a drone battery, or solar storage will be refused. If you are ordering something with a battery, tell us and we will check the capacity before you pay.
Most perfume and anything with a high alcohol content in the bottle, above a small quantity. A single small bottle is normally accepted; a set of six is not.
Nail varnish, varnish remover, paint, thinner, glue above a certain size, and anything with a flammable symbol on the bottle.
Pressurised sports equipment. A football is fine. A gas cartridge for an inflator is not.
And a category people are surprised by: anything wet or that can leak. Bottled sauces, oils, liquid detergent in a large container. These can travel by sea perfectly happily and we will move them to a sea shipment rather than refuse them.
What happens when something is stopped is worth knowing, because it is the annoying part. The item is already at our warehouse and it cannot fly, so the choices are to hold it for the next sea container, return it to the seller if the seller will take it, or dispose of it. Two of those three cost money and the third is a loss.
So tell us the whole order at quotation, including the little things. It takes us two minutes to check, and it is the difference between a shipment that leaves on Tuesday and one that sits for a month.
