Shipping to MA consumers

Anyone out there doing so successfully? We have a MA direct to consumer license and the stickers from the state for the boxes in hand. I’ve been told by a few people itb that Fedex ground will accept pkgs, and by one other itb person that UPS will but I can’t find anyone at either company that knows about that.

If folks are using a third party in MA to reship or otherwise facilitate, I’d be curious to know who and how you like them.

I’ve accepted packages from Fedex (albeit a low number…)

i cna’t speak to shipping, but I get wine from UPS and FEDex ground all the time

Wine from out of state wineries where the wine originated out of state and wasn’t reshipped internal to MA?

Yes. Sojourn ships to me in MA.

Josh - You might want to speak to Kathleen Inman at Inman Family. She has been successgully shipping to Mass for several years. Would love if you guys could ship here!

She’s the one who told me that Fedex and UPS will ship to MA but I’m getting NOWHERE trying to pursue it with reps of either company. I asked her for her Fedex account rep’s contact info a while back, perhaps I’ll try that route again.

Greatly appreciate the responses, by the way!

Josh,

I’m sure you have to go through the same process we did with UPS in regards to shipping wine. UPS has you inter into a contract for wine shipping that should be a little different for you than for us as a retailer. For us, there was a list of states they wouldn’t ship to. Because of you compliance with specific states they will/should accept all shipments. The more you ship with UPS, the better the rates. We ship daily where some wineries might ship intermittently except during initial release or wine club. You shouldn’t have any problems shipping to MA. When we signed up, they sent a rep out who went over the paperwork and contracts. It was relatively simple and the rep provided us with good info on the type of contract we chose, (example we didn’t need world ship and gave us the phone number for our hub to call in pick-ups.) All of our local UPS contacts are great, right down to the fill-ins when our regular driver is off and a good number are customers too.

We ship a large portion of our wine with UPS and agree they are great to work with, but as MA law is pretty onerous regarding the carrier licensing their vehicles one by one and / or sharing culpability in customers exceeding their per-time cap of wine shipments, UPS and Fedex both refuse to ship to MA for us… if you know of a UPS rep who will make it happen for us please PM me their info!

Having done business as a retailer in MA and gone through the various nonsense of trying to disguise shipments/having shipments confiscated by the shipper I am frankly quite shocked that anyone feels safe shipping/receiving wine in MA unless its a license to license shipment.

I can’t believe they are being that big of a pain unless MA is putting the screws to them like MI. I wonder if its your driver or some office person that just doesn’t understand you have the legal right to ship to MA. If you’re licensed to ship to MA there shouldn’t be any problem. Try it the American way, ask to speak to their supervisor. Fax them your license/certificate and challenge why they don’t want your business when your attorney says everything is in place.

One other question. Is your winery way out in the boondocks or hard to access?

I’m baffled. We can’t ship wine to MA, but they take every package of cigars, cigar and wine accessories we send to MA.

One last thing. Maybe you need to sit down with a UPS supervisor or manager and have your shipping contract rewritten to include “MA with proper licensing,” so the your driver doesn’t panic and think he’ll be fired for picking up the packages.

I haven’t investigated as far with Fedex, but from UPS it’s a very clear no and I’ve had just one person who told me that UPS is beginning to ship from CA → MA, though our UPS rep and the higher ups claims this person is speaking in error. FWIW, UPS makes it pretty clear on their site, in the third paragraph:

Fedex seems clear on it.

Under the Licensee to Licensee

Both shipper and recipient must be licensed wholesalers, distributors, dealers, manufacturers, retailers or importers. Shipments can move via FedEx Express®, FedEx Ground® and FedEx Home Delivery® services.

1FedEx Express does not transport wine into, out of or within the state of Massachusetts.

I just joined the forum and it’s killing me seeing the offers for Berserkers Day and not being able to take advantage of them.

Hopefully every forum member from Massachusetts has visited Free the Grapes and sent their reps the form letters.

I recieved this encouraging response from one of mine

Hi Buzz,



I just wanted to respond and say I support this legislation. In fact, I co-sponsored a similar bill that accomplishes the same thing. Hopefully the committee will report this out favorably and we will have a chance to debate and vote for this on the floor of the House and Senate.


Regards,
Steven L. Levy
State Representative
4th Middlesex District

State House, Room 33
Boston, MA 02133

(617) 722-2060 x8558

We need to keep pushing.

OK, I have now gotten irked enough to look up this Massachusetts shipping stuff. The shipper only needs one permit. M.G.L. c. 138, § 22. The application is available here: http://www.mass.gov/abcc/pdf/forms/2010%20Application%20for%20a%20General%20Express%20Transportation%20Permit.pdf. This is in specific contrast to transportation permits for companies licensed to SELL the alcohol, which are on a vehicle by vehicle basis: http://www.mass.gov/abcc/pdf/forms/2010%20Application%20for%20a%20Licensee's%20Permit%20to%20Transport%20and%20Deliver%20AB.pdf. The people who have posted random stuff on the Internet about a vehicle-by-vehicle licensing requirement are either confusing the rules for shippers with the rules for sellers or are not up to date on current law (the application linked above was revised in 2010).

The shipper does, however, need to carry a certified copy of the permit in any vehicle that is transporting alcohol. The application makes it very easy to get certified copies, albeit at a cost of $50 per copy. The certified copies are not identified with a particular vehicle. Obviously, one way to comply would be to get a copy for every single vehicle. Another way would be to have a pile of certified copies at the warehouse, and when a package properly marked as containing alcohol is loaded in a truck, a copy of the permit goes in at the same time.

There is no provision that says anything about a shipper being responsible for a recipient exceeding the 240 liters per year cap. To the contrary, the statute imposing the cap on recipients (M.G.L. c. 138, § 19F) says nothing about shippers and the statute governing shippers (M.G.L. c. 138, § 22) says nothing about any limitation on recipients. There is a separate limit in one of the provisions of the shipping statute saying that any individual shipment may not exceed 20 liters (2 cases plus 2 liters), but that provision does not seem to apply to a person operating a “general express or trucking business” who receives a shipping license. FedEx and UPS would appear to qualify under the broader provision for express companies, but if they think the 20 liter cap applies to them then all that would be necessary would be to split up shipments exceeding that amount into multiple smaller shipments.

– Matt

Also, as I noted on another thread (Did NJ just finally become a reciprocal state? - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers) and as this research confirms, the permitting requirement for shippers does not vary depending on whether the shipment is intrastate or interstate. Since UPS and FedEx do plenty of in-state wine shipping in Massachusetts, it is hard to understand why they think they would have difficulty complying with respect to interstate shipments. The only thing I can imagine is that for ground shipments which might leave a warehouse in another state and arrive in Massachusetts, they might need to arrange to get a certified copy of their permit into the truck in the same way they do for in-state shipments. But I think the statute is pretty clear on this point that unless the truck is making a delivery (i.e. to a recipient) of alcoholic beverages, they do not need to carry a permit. And if delivery of packages containing wine to a FedEx/UPS warehouse were a problem then barring shipments to Massachusetts recipients would not solve the problem, since it would have nothing to do with whether the addressee of the package were in Massachusetts or not. I am sure FedEx and UPS aren’t going to great pains to comply with Massachusetts licensing for wine shipments going to New Hampshire that happen to stop overnight in Massachusetts.

– Matt

Hi Matt,

Thanks for your detailed and informative responses! I think the biggest problem is education, as the laws have been so Draconian for so long perhaps many drivers/package takers are afraid of dealing with alcohol shipments. Also, it’s telling that those who actually receive wines are not revealing their ‘secrets,’ I hope there is at least an ‘Underground Railroad’ of info going to the MA Berserkers!

I left Boston in 2004, but I can tell you from 1992-2004 trying to ship wine was quite an ordeal, and even when we thought we had a quasi-legal setup with Fedex (UPS was an absolute no-go) there was always one person in the chain who seemed to be able to tie up my shipments.

FWIW, I never tried to receive shipments as a consumer.

“Filed”
http://www.malegislature.gov/Bills/187/House/H01883

“Referred to committee”
http://www.malegislature.gov/bills/187/house/h01029

And the committees

http://www.malegislature.gov/Committees/Joint/J17

Both bills seem to be held up in the House side.

I was speaking to the proprietor of Winderlea yesterday. They ship to MA from OR, but they use a 3rd carrier to get the wine to the Fed-Ex distribution center in MA and then Fed-Ex delivers it locally.