Anyone in the US used The Whisky Exchange?

@numen I thoroughly endorse the buying of tons of stuff from TWE :)

@cowfish You mention that TWE handles customs clearance these days? Are you able to elaborate at all on this? I note that on orders to Australis for example, there's a 10 pound charge for customs documentation. Is this to help correctly identify the contents for Customs? Or does it enable the package to clear without attracting duty (wishful thinking I suspect). Cheers, J

@Whisk We handle US customs clearance, it's part of the way we ship since the rule changes. Basically we apply customs charges to US parcels at the checkout - it's a lot cheaper when we do it compared to getting hit on entry to the country.

For Australia it's the former - we have to put the customs statement with every package which lets the folks at customs know exactly what's in the parcel. This increases the likelihood of the parcel getting picked up for fees, but is the law. Australian customs is very hot on charging duty anyway, as I've heard they get paid (which I still can't really believe, although I have been told it's true several times) commission...

@cowfish That's awesome I've thought about using your services but have had some customs doubts and shipping concerns. Thanks for all the great info on your site maybe I will get past my nervousness of ordering over the internet and just do it. :)

@cowfish In my experience, if a package is clearly labelled with contents and value, as with previous TWE orders I've made, they get through Aussie customs without incurring duty (thanks!). I don't know about them working on a commission basis but I would not discount it given the behaviour of other alleged government departments. There's an interesting expose on Australian Customs which has been gaining traction here in Australia which pretty much shows how they're a corporate entity operating outside of Australian law (as with virtually every other Australian government department), but that's a story for another day.

@systemdown, I would suggest that it is increasingly difficult to distinguish any department of any western government from a corporate entity!

@systemdown That's good to know - we don't often get feedback when parcels go through without charges...

@cowfish I wonder when the Whisky exchange will be able to ship to Canada. We're a part of the commonwealth for goodness sakes. To get stuff like Bladnoch here I have to ship it to a friend in the US who then brings it over 1 bottle at a time.

I know this is not an issue specific to your company, it's an issue of Canadian customs rules, but for goodness sake, you can ship to a country the rebelled against you! And yet to Canada, a country that still consider the Queen our head of state, zippo...

Do you think the current free trade talks may solve this? I imagine TWE would otherwise not mind adding the Canadian market...

@Nozinan If we could ship to Canada we would - we know how many whisky lovers are there and it would be excellent if customs didn't send back or destroy anything we've tried to send. However, with the state alcohol laws as they are there's no chance we'll be able to any time soon.

Work on your government(s) - once you've got it sorted we'll start shipping :)

@cowfish, the delivery was exemplary. The bottle arrived two days ahead of schedule and the recipient, a recent college grad, was very impressed. He spirited the beautifully boxed bottle off to his man cave and left me on the outside imploring him to share just a taste. Special occasion, he says. I will be there. Thanks again to The Whisky Exchange for wonderful service.

@momlindax3 Thanks! I shall pass that on to the team.

@momlindax3 I just used it, also for the occasion of graduating college. I would recommend it. The bottle arrived pretty quickly and were well-packaged. I'd recommend buying at least two bottles though because the overseas shipping is so expensive, and it's really expensive to get one bottle and not significantly more expensive to get two. I would also only buy something that is not available in the US because of the high shipping and the exchange rates. I'll probably buy a Glenfarclas 15 from them eventually along with a Karuizawa if they get one that's reasonably priced.

@stakenblocken It depends on what you mean by reasonably priced, but I'd expect all new Karuizawas appearing (other than Asama bottlings) to be a bit on the expensive side. We do have our Spirit of Asama pair which are much more affordable and might have some of the Number One Drinks 2nd edition Asama in the future (if they let us have any).