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> The acts of intimidation included sending live insects, a foetal pig and a funeral wreath to the Steiners' home in Natick, Massachusetts. If someone I knew c
by thebruce87m 3y ago
> The acts of intimidation included sending live insects, a foetal pig and a funeral wreath to the Steiners' home in Natick, Massachusetts.
If someone I knew claimed that eBay execs were sending them things like this I wouldn’t believe them. It’s like something from a TV show.
- dylan604 3y agoI wonder what the rules on sending live specimens through the post are. Knowingly not using the right markings on the package can cause issues. When they ask you if you have any of "these" things in the package and you then say no would be a federal crime. Messing with the postal inspectors tends to be wildly underappreciated at the repercussions they can inflict.
- o11c 3y agoThe rules: https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm
- ksherlock 3y agoMy father was a rural letter carrier and I can 100% confirm that live bees and live chicks are sent USPS.
- lesuorac 3y agoI think you guys are missing the actually comment. The question isn't "can you send live animals" the question is "what happens if I sent a live/dead animal and _don't_ tell USPS". That question is not answered by the section (?) 526 rules [1]. [1]: https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm
- alright2565 3y agoThere's no problem mailing dead animals: > The following factors are applied to all shipments of mailable live or dead animals: > … Protection of the mail and the environment against the following: … Obnoxious odors and noise. > ...protection of animal specimens against spoilage https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_003.htm https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_003.htm There's some other restrictions on mailing dead wild animals, but mailing livestock carcasses is not restricted from what I can see outside of those broad guidelines.
- ethbr1 3y agoI believe the Hot Zone (though maybe not the Reston incident it was based on?) starts off with leaking deceased monkey remains arriving at a pathology lab. Few better ways to spoil a pathologist's morning than a package with a blood stain in one corner. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/25-years-ago-in-virginia-a-very-different-ebola-outbreak/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/25-years-ago-in-virginia-a-very...
- lesuorac 3y agoI can't tell if you're being intentionally dense. Lets do a different example. Lets say I go to checkout at a grocery store and I ring up a bar of soap as a bag of ice. Obviously this is wrong. Nobody is debating you can buy soap at the store but to claim it is ice is wrong. Back to USPS. Nobody is claiming you can't send live animals. The question is what happens when you send a live animal and don't claim it.
- alright2565 3y agoI'm only replying to the part about dead animals, like a preserved foetal pig. There's no need to declare anything in that case. Might need to declare the preservation chemicals, but nothing about the actual dead animal.
- Scoundreller 3y agoThat's what couriers are for. I'm sure eBay knows which ones are the most reliable. And lying to them is just a breach of contract (but they can open more stuff willy nilly).
- dekhn 3y agoI have had a snail mailed to me, via snail mail, before. I also get live tardigrades mailed, but they go by UPS.
- hsuduebc2 3y agoYou did something or just met a psycho?
- dekhn 3y agoI bought a small box aquarium and the snail in it died. I wrote to the company and they replied by mailing me a snail in a bag. IIRC, it was clearly labelled "live animal". (over the years, I've come to enjoy snail-quariums a lot. They outlive all the fish and keep the walls clean of algae)
- joecool1029 3y ago> I wonder what the rules on sending live specimens through the post are. Wonder no more: https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm (I've mailed bee nucs to my local post office, it's usually uneventful, once a newer employee was a little nervous having it around)
- burnished 3y agoContext for fellow leaders; nuc is short for nucleus and is basically a small colony or a place a small colony might live. It is not short for bee nunchucks as I had assumed
- peteradio 3y agoAlso, let's not forget - let's not forget, Dude - that keeping wildlife, an amphibious rodent, for uh, domestic, you know, within the city - that aint legal either.
- sleepybrett 3y agoOh it just gets crazier from there. They flew to their city and stalked them for days, gps tracked their car etc etc
- hhh 3y agoSounds like regular stimulant abuser behavior to me
- codetrotter 3y agoI wonder where the execs got hold of those things. Did they buy it on eBay and have it shipped from a seller? Or did they go and put a dead pig in a box themselves? Messed up either way, and good that an end was put to their harassment of the bloggers.
- bloppe 3y agoProbably ordered on Amazon.
- eszed 3y agoThe Edmund Scientific catalog used to sell all of the things on the list, so it was probably there (are they still in business?), or somewhere similar.
- dharmab 3y agoLive insects you can buy at any pet store that sells reptile supplies. Fetal pigs are sold to schools for dissection in biology class.
- willis936 3y agoBack when people used to say "there's no such thing as bad publicity" the internet hadn't been invented and there was little notion of the yet-unnamed Streisand Effect. Even in the most generous interpretations of the saying, this is a uniquely extraordinary exception to it.
- jongjong 3y agoI think this trivializes the experience. They wouldn't have known who was behind it initially and must have thought they were targeted by the government. Anyone who has had weird stuff happening to them like finding a GPS tracker on their car among other weird stuff would end up going down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole about 'targeted individuals' or similar. It is extremely distressing.
- contravariant 3y agoHonestly it sounds like the kind of harassment that involved the phrase "who will believe you?" at some point.
- wannacboatmovie 3y agoI want to know if the execs were putting the roaches into a package themselves in their mahogany offices or if they paid someone to do it... CaaS maybe? (Cockroaches as a Service)
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agothere already are pigeons as a service PaaS
- chasontherobot 3y agoI don't know if it still exists but there used to be a company that advertised public lice as a service
- irjustin 3y agoWhere do people get the idea that 1) This will work. 2) it's a good idea 3) that in US, you won't get sued for it. This is some weird 1950's mob loan shark tactics.
- ethbr1 3y ago> weird 1950's mob loan shark tactics How long have you hung around with sales and marketing folks? Most of them are reasonable, but in a role where you rapidly switch companies and are comped heavily on closed sales... the outliers are really out there.
- DANmode 3y agoSurely you grasp that this is why the rich and or powerful (used to?) get away with lots, and why many feel they can do things like this, often with no true consequences.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]