Hi, all. Been a Rollitup lurker for a long time, but never posted. I made an account to respond to this thread, because I was freaking out with shipping paranoia and reading everything on Google for the last two days. I wanted to tell my (long!) UPS story in the hope of easing someone else's mind.
I visited a grower friend in CA last week, and she and her boyfriend send weed UPS all the time. I let them convince me to send myself some cross-country. Here, for better or for worse, is exactly what we did:
1. Put 3 oz into three separate quart baggies. Put two of the baggies into one gallon baggie and one oz into another.
2. Vacuum-sealed the gallon baggies with a food sealer.
3. Washed a couple of t-shirts and a hoodie with a large front pocket
4. Tucked one bag into the pocket of the freshly laundered hoodie and folded it up; folded the other bag in a t-shirt
I packed everything tightly into a box, threw in a couple of books I'd been reading on the trip, and...here's where we started doing stuff that made me freak out upon Googling:
1. Used a box, tape, and scissors they happened to have around the house, in which we'd been trimming and smoking
2. Didn't wash our hands, didn't double vacuum-seal
2. Wrote my real name and address on a piece of paper (for the return, I made up a name and used the address of a local business)
3. Took it to the UPS store with my friend, BOTH of us wearing shirts from dispensaries (something we didn't even realize until later)
4. Made a joke about the box containing clothes (it was relevant and true, but still)
5. Paid cash, mailed ground
So basically every no-no you see on every forum. Plus I had to wait EIGHT FREAKING DAYS for the package to arrive, so that was some psychological torture.
The package arrived today, on time, perfectly intact (including the glass jar of cannabis lotion another friend gave me). The UPS guy left it on the porch as always. When I unpacked it, the clothes smelled enough like weed that I washed them again, but the box itself had no smell at all -- and one of the bags contains THE dankest strain I've ever smelled. So if you're freaking out, try not to. The package spent eight days traveling cross-country and there was no issue at all. I got lucky and I'll never do it again -- not worth the anxiety -- but I'll sure enjoy having enough free weed to get me through the winter!