Buying a Chicco Stroller and Car Seat Abroad

We are in the home stretch! With less than a month until Baby Maximus' due date, we are assembling all sorts of baby things, washing ALL the baby clothes and anxiously waiting for our little guy to make his appearance.  Shortly after we broke the news to my parents about their upgrade to grandparent status, they graciously offered to buy us our stroller and car seat combination (aka travel system).

We began researching our different options for travel systems, as well as car seat requirements in both Germany and the United States. I knew that our car seat would have to meet American standards since the majority of our driving would be done in the United States.  The last thing I wanted was to get pulled over shortly after our return to the States and get a ticket for a car seat that didn't comply with American requirements.  That would be quite the welcome back!  We decided to go with the Chicco Bravo Travel System.

Because of this, we had to order our car seat, and therefore the entire travel system from the United States. I didn't really think this would be an issue since we have a DPO box and have things shipped to it whenever we need something from the United States without any issues.  What I didn't think about was the size of the box the travel system would come in.   There is a limit of a combined 108 inches in length, width and height on any package shipped to an APO/FPO/DPO address.

Whenever I tried to put the travel system in my online shopping cart on Amazon or Babies R Us, it quickly notified me that the travel system couldn't be shipped to our mailbox.   Buy Buy Baby would let me place the order, but I got an email the next day saying that my order had been cancelled because it couldn't be shipped to my address. My mom called Buy Buy Baby and spoke to someone who assured her that it could be shipped and placed the order, only to have it cancelled the next day.

She called back and after lots of troubleshooting, my mom and the representative decided the best way to have them shipped was to order a car seat and a stroller separately.  I guess when you order the travel system, both items are shipped in the same box, which exceeds the shipping dimensions.  If you order them separately, they are shipped in two smaller (although still pretty big) boxes.   Two weeks later, they arrived at our DPO box and we are now the proud owners of a car seat and stroller!

Thanks to my mom for spending lots of time figuring this all out and to both of my parents for their generous gift!