Pausing Sales to the US

I started PacifiGo in order to provide a reasonably priced source of reasonable quality go equipment. I always intended my customer base to be mostly Australian, but if someone from another country wants to buy from me, I’ll happily meet that need. It doesn’t really make things much more difficult to post to Romania or China or Argentina.

However, a few times now, Australian Customs has rejected my attempts to send go equipment to the US, with the only feedback I’ve received being that they think the go stones are coins (which are legal to export in the vast majority of cases anyway). It’s a minority of cases, but since postage to the US is often over $AU100 per attempt, and each rejection means rolling that dice again, means that it’s hard to justify sending to the US, especially given the very limited number of orders I get from there. I’m annoyed, the customer is justly annoyed, and I’m out a not-small amount of money.

And now I’m told in order to send to the US at all I need to set up an account with some US company because of something something tariffs something border control something. Which is minor in itself – I’m a private person, but I understand as a business I need to deal with government agencies in ways a normal person doesn’t – but until I can talk to a customs agent here and get a better idea of what’s going on, I’ve paused sales to the US. Trust me, it’s not because I don’t want to sell to them – I’ll sell to anyone! Go should be available to anyone, and if for some reason someone in the US prefers to buy from me, I’ll happily serve their need. But until I can get this sorted out, it’s genuinely not worth the hassle or stress, for me or the customers. Any existing US customers with outstanding orders, I’ll continue to work with to resolve those orders as best we can.

Hopefully I can get this sorted soon.