A Note to Our International Members

We’d like to take a moment to explain how we mail issues of BATS to our international members. Because of the high cost of airmail, we use an international mail distribution center. We label and pack your issues of BATS, then ship them to the center in New York City. They are then presorted by country, metered with U.S. postage, and flown to the various destination countries. The only variation relates to Canada where soon, to improve delivery service, mail will be taken across the border, affixed with Canadian postage, and then delivered. This entire process, including delivery by your local postal service, typically takes several weeks.

Many of you also have noticed that we don’t mail copies of our catalogue to addresses outside the U.S. We made this decision several years ago because the majority of BCI’s international members did not order from the catalogue, and it was prohibitively expensive to mail to so many who didn’t use it. Also, shipping charges for merchandise going outside the U.S. were extremely high, and customers had the added costs of customs fees. Many times, we had merchandise refused by customers because of these fees, and BCI had to absorb the cost of return postage.

We are happy, however, to send you a catalogue at your request. Just send us a note, or e-mail us at members@batcon.org, and we’ll send you a current catalogue.