Military Experiences

[kstark21]

Why is this item not able to be shipped to APO? Instead, I have to ship it to my mom, who then reboxes it and ships it to my APO. Additionally, because it is SHIPPED to my mother first, I get charged the sales tax of her state of residence despite my BILLING address being APO. This makes absolutely no sense to me. It would be like Best Buy checking with customers at the cash register to ensure that their purchases will only be used in the state of purchase.

I'm going to have to swallow this bitter pill, because this is the only high end smartphone that I'm aware of that doesn't require a 24 month contract to own and BB seems to have exclusivity on it, at least for now. This whole process makes it expensive and difficult to consider purchasing from BB in the future while I am living abroad. I do not get charged sales tax by any other e-tailer (Amazon.com, Walmart.com, etc) 

[darkcmf]

While I cannot speak for Best Buy's policy directly on this, I have recently been shopping for some new cell phones, and have what may be an answer for you.

My finding is that many cell phone manufacturers and carriers do not allow cell phones to be shipped overseas because the phones are encoded regionally.   Meaning, a phone that you purchase in one location (the US) may not work overseas in some regions.  As a result of that situation, and the hassle with people buying cell phones from the "wrong region" I have discovered that it is very common for many service providers and phone manufacturers/sales outlets to deny shipping them overseas because of the customer service nightmare that typically used to result in the past from doing so.

It is unfortunate that your mother lives in a state where there is sales tax applied to your order though, I guess that is just a case of bad luck.

[slimjim8481]

I feel your pain. I had the same problem with a set of headphones. I ordered a pair from best buy but they said that they cant ship them to an APO address. They had a free shipping offer, but now I have to pay for tax and shipping from the stateside address to my APO. What makes me more angry is the wait time. I have a messed up pair of earbuds that will probaby now take 2-3 weeks to replace. If best buy was "able" to ship them directly to me it would only take half the time. So much for their military friendly banner that they are flying on their home page.

[darkcmf]

SlimJim... 

Double check that.  I mean, call Best Buy and ask someone about that.  While I was in Afghanistan, I had more than one package shipped directly to me through Best Buy.  There are some issues with the way that the address gets formatted though.  My wife had to call and speak with someone on the phone for a little while the first time, in order to get it figured out, but once that was handled, every single order went through, shipped, and arrived with absolutely no issues whatsoever.

It was just a matter of getting the address formatted properly, and Best Buy had no issues shipping to an APO address.

[slimjim8481]

It was not an issue with the address format. It took me about 10 minutes to figure that one out. Once I got the address right i got a message that said that they didnt ship my particular products to APO s. I guess they just dont ship "Skull Candy" products to APO's. Thank you for your comment though. I will try to contact them next time.