I'm leaving for Tanzania on 31 August with travel through Amsterdam. I applied for my Dutch firearms/ammo consent form on the first of July. Immediately after I faxed the form, I noticed I had made an error (the date) on the form. Two days later I sent the Dutch authorities a new form with the correct date information. After a month, I received my permit from them but, with the wrong date as was indicated on the first form. I never received a response from the second request form.

Last week, I contacted the Dutch officals by telephone. After a couple of minutes I was connected with someone who spoke English. I explained what had happened to him and he asked what the problem was??? I told him I had submitted the form with the wrong date but had sent an updated form with the correct information but had not gotten a response. Apparently, he could still not understand my concern. He said, "you only need one permit". So I asked him if the date would cause a problem and he said it shouldn't.

I still have concerns but don't want to pester them into cancelling my original permit or causing some other problem on my trip. At least, the date error was on my return through Amsterdam and not on the inbound flight!

Anyone with any thoughts on how I will fare on my return trip?

Bull1

Hi bull1,

twice in the past four years I have extended my trip beyond the dates I gave on my consent form. In both cases I did not have any problem in Amsterdam.

As your plane ticket has a code on it, actually your reservation record does, that signifies you are carrying firearms, the screeners will know and may ask you about it but no problems on my end.

There is an expiration date located in the block on the lower right corner of the first page. That's what you should be concerned about.

jetdrvr,

I checked the form and to the best of my ability to read and understand Dutch it appears that it is valid from 28 August until 28 September. That gives me plenty of clearance on both ends. At least the dates are written in English.

Bull1

Yeah, bull, if you're within the valid dates, you should have no problems. We tagged out a week prior to our scheduled departure and rebooked and I encountered no problems whatsoever with the Dutch customs people. KLM was a pain in the ass, though, as mentioned in a separate post.

How do you get a consent form last minute? I just talked to a fellow I know this morning who just returned from his first hunt in RSA. He flew there without going through Amsterdam, however on the return trip due to some travel date issues, came home through Amsterdam. His rifle is still in Amsterdam. He is working it out and will get it back from what I gather, just curious, what could he have done in this case? Again this is a friend of mine not myself so I cannot say 100% that this was unavoidable. For what it is worth I saw the pics this morning and he got some great animals out on the Eastern Cape.

7xbjt,

not going to gaurantee this works all the time but a clinet two years ago had to change his return reservation while on his safari due to a major issue in the US. He, too, had to return via Amsterdam.

What we had this fellow do was get a hold of the form via the web, and the fill it out. The PHs wife wife ran it to the nearest fax center and faxed it in with a cover letter marked urgent with a short explanation. Fax center called the next day that they had a fax for us-- the permit approved. We retrieved it on the way to Jo-berg the day after.

Worth a try if you get stuck like that i guess.