In preparation for our Belgium trip my wife purchased this 8-bottle shipper for my birthday. It just arrived today and I have to say, I'm very impressed. Obviously, I got it for traveling and using as checked luggage. But I'm thinking this is the perfect way to Fedex beer. First, it's basically bombproof. I can't imagine a scenario that a bottle could break without destroying the actual case. I have a good buddy in Denver, and we send boxes back and forth a few times a year. So after we get back from Europe I'm going to send 8 bottles his way. I do have a question though. The case does have two spots for pad locks. I know for traveling I'd have to use a TSA-approved Sentry lock but what about shipping via Fedex? I can't seem to find a definitive answer on whether Fedex can/would open a TSA lock. I've heard lots of stories about "seized" boxes for shipping alcohol against their terms of service, but if they can't open the package how could they know? Even if they could X-ray it, they couldn't see any more than a bottle and liquid. Thoughts?
While it would be nice to have something like that if you made frequent trips overseas or flew with beer/wine frequently. I think its a little much for anything else, I wouldn't want to ship that thing back and forth with a trade partner. The weight on the case alone is probably 15+ lbs.
For shipment via FedEx, in lieu of padlocks you could put the entire thing in a cardboard box of the same size. Like a super "box within a box" technique. It does look like a great shipper, but seems like it would only be necessary for extremely valuable bottles, or as the previous poster mentioned, it would be great for someone who travels frequently to buy beer. I probably wouldn't buy myself, but if I was given it as a gift I would use the crap out of it ( I make a lot of business trips).
I mean if you want to Fed ex that monster, more power to you. But for me that would be overkill for shipping, as the standard style styro shippers seem to protect/work very well, and would save you quite a bit of money.
