We only ship to the continental United States

The jug

This is 2019 and in the past couple of weeks I have run across two large companies that still won't ship to Alaska. For the record #Igloo and #RTIC, both makers of outdoor equipment. For crying out loud #RTIC even has a form of the word "arctic" in its logo along with an image of a polar bear and still won't ship to the only Arctic region of the United States.
     Years ago this was not an unusual occurrence. Many vendors excluded Alaska and Hawaii using the excuse they only shipped to the Untied States or only to the continental United States.
     When we pointed out that a) we're indeed in the same country, and b) we are on the same continent, at times some of them relented and it hasn't happened to me in some time now. At least until this week.
      What you really hate is going through the whole ordering process including credit information only to see a red warning pop up when you "place your order" that tells you the company doesn't ship to Alaska and Hawaii.
        There did come a time when I won one of those battles. A few years ago Scholastic, the firm that sells books in schools, had a contest for students to write a short essay on how a Harry Potter book affected them. I was teaching a creative writing program in my son's elementary school class and thought it might be a cool writing exercise for the kids. They were excited and many made the attempt. When I went to write instructions for them to submit their essays, I learned Scholastic excluded Alaska and Hawaii. I wrote complaining they were happy enough to sell their books to us, then drew a line at including Alaskans in their contests. A few other people wrote also. Scholastic relented, extended the contest two extra weeks and encouraged our kids to enter. A girl from Fairbanks won one of the prizes. Later for my complaint, Scholastic sent me a boxed set of the first three Harry Potter books. I donated them to the school.
Since then I don't recall running into the problem, at least not frequently. Alaskans also have another problem. Many of us live in areas without regular postal delivery and so use Post Office boxes. Several vendors refuse to ship to a PO box. Our own Post Office has a work-around. We can have things shipped to the Post Office's street address and put our box numbers in the "apartment" box on the order form delivery instructions. Companies like UPS and Fed-Ex will deliver our packages to the Post Office and we can pick them up there. This is also helpful in preventing thefts of packages left on doorsteps. Two problems solved.
But nothing solves the problem of retailers who refuse to ship to Alaska and Hawaii. In some ways many of us are quite happy much of the world thinks of Alaska as inaccessible, but then it's irritating when they won't send us stuff we want.
So you end up in a situation where you really want a product, but you never want to deal with this company now or ever again. Sometimes you can find what you want from another seller like Amazon, but in the case of the jug, not. My niece has offered to let them send it to her and she will mail it to me.
  I haven't been able to find anything else like a container that holds a gallon of milk and can take a beating on a rough trail, not leak or break and pours without spilling all over the place. #RTIC has a stainless steel one that looks good and it's on sale for half price, but not for #Alaskans.
When I think of all the milk spilled along the trail. The frozen gallon-sized chunks of milk that split a plastic container open or the cooler-material type that leaks all over the trail tote on the trail and all over the counter when it pours, I really, really want this stainless steel beauty that looks like it can take a beating and not leak. So it goes, swallow my outrage and buy it.
Follow this space.