I’m sorry but we’re going to stop shipping to the UK altogether. The duties and other fees are just insane. They really, really don’t want you buying stuff from the US.

Every day we send straps all over the world without problems, but when we ship to the UK it’s a problem every time. The postage is very high and then there will be fees and VAT and duties that are just as much as the postage. And then you’re going to get mad at us. So let’s just call a time-out for now.

• Okay, I’ll tell you what we can do. I’m really perfectly happy to send our straps to the UK, I just don’t want you getting upset at us. If you’d like to order something, drop us an email and we’ll make it happen.

It’s getting close to the traditional “Days Of Gift Giving Panic” when we get quite a few requests for last minute overnight shipping. Well, we’re just not going to do it. Sorry.

While we are perfectly willing to FedEx or Priority Express your order, painful experience has shown us that a significant portion of those last minute orders, maybe around 20%, just ain’t gonna get there before Christmas, despite anybody’s overnight guarantee.

The painful part is when I get a bunch of calls and emails from irate people telling me that little Johnny’s Christmas has been RUINED and it’s all my fault. It’s quite unpleasant.  Christmas this year is on a Wednesday, so you may be thinking that it just might be possible to order something on Monday and actually get it by Tuesday and have it in time for Christmas and be off the hook.

It’s not like I don’t get it. I’m a last-possible-minute shopper myself. But at some point, a guy’s just got to admit he’s procrastinated past the deadline and there’s no way around having to actually leave the house and go to some mall or something where they sell Christmas present stuff that you can buy right on the spot and put it in your car and take it home and see if there’s some wrapping paper around that’s not too wrinkly and looks like it could maybe pass for Christmas.

We’d like to help you out of your jam but…well…we’re not going to. We’re going to be way too busy ourselves frantically shopping online for anything we can get delivered overnight. Hey, maybe some of those dog pajamas! Do those people deliver overnight?

I have been using Royal Mail to send things to the UK for many years and I am at a loss to understand why they have so much trouble delivering mail to addresses that may not have changed for 500 years.

In contrast, the Australian postal system, where everything is hundreds or thousands of miles from anywhere else, never has any problem quickly delivering any parcel, despite the fact that an Australian postman literally faces death if he gets lost or his vehicle breaks down or he runs across the wrong sort of spider.

So while I am happy to send your order to the UK, I am not happy to receive your angry emails asking me where the hell your package is or why you have to go to some postal office to pick it up. I don’t know. I don’t understand how anything works in the UK. Ask Margaret Thatcher, who thought it would be a really great idea to privatize your mail system. Maybe she knows.

What I do know is that everything we send to the UK gets to where it’s supposed to go…eventually. It just takes a while. I wouldn’t even consider getting nervous about it for at least 30 days.

Canada Post is really, really slow too, but to be fair, they have a vast amount of territory to deliver to and most of it is covered with icebergs and inhabited mostly by hungry bears.

If you’re ordering a guitar strap as a gift and you don’t want to have a invoice in the package, you can just let us know and we’ll make up a gift receipt. A gift receipt doesn’t have prices on it and we can also add any message you would like. No problem, just let us know when you are checking out.