Got my valleyschwag!
After a looong wait, and a detour via customs, I finally got my grubby little hands on my Valleyschwag package (well, OK, I washed my hands first). If you check out the picture, you will notice the friendly green sticker saying “Selbstverzollung” (customs to be paid by recipient), which goes on to tell the post office that the “package is not to be shipped to the recipient but to be handed to customs authorities” (their emphasis). After I explained to the very nice lady at the local customs office that the package contained promotional items (Werbegeschenke), and opened it in front of her, she let me take it without paying any customs on it. Yay!
Hint to Valleyschwag guys: “Promotional Items” in German-speaking countries is “Werbematerial” or “Werbegeschenke”. Maybe you can expand your shipping DB and labelling software to add i18n?
Anyway. Now that I have the schwag, it was well worth the wait. I scored two t-shirts (one RubyRed labs shirt, which almost everybody got, as well as an ioda shirt), and a Moveable Type hat, plus a pencil, some stickers, the excellent goatse stickers, a Moveable Type keychain, PerplexCity cards (huh? haven’t a clue. Am I living under a rock or something?) and a slide condom. If I’m not mistaken, the extra shirt and hat are a “bonus” for having blogged about VS early on. Hooray! I’m pimping out my blog for t-shirts! 
Considering the VS guys paid more than ten bucks just for the international postage, I’d say this was excellent value for money. Pity the shipping took so long, though: I really could have used the shirts and the hat during my week in Crete.
Now I’m looking forward to this month’s package; the folks at VS promised to send international orders earlier, this time. Great idea!
Tags: Valleyschwag; schwag
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June 28th, 2006 at 12:42 am
Thanks for the tip - packages to German-speaking coutries will be marked “Werbegeschenke” when they go out this month.