Originally Posted by
flolee
Oh, since when has it changed? A year ago it would have been taken from you (well, me, in this case
). At SFO they told explicitly that the sealed bag is not going to be accepted at LHR.
There was only a few weeks in 2006/2007 when LHR wasn't accepting STEBs from the USA. When people stopped buy duty frees generally there was a concerted effort to get the current STEB régime in place. I know SFO participates in this process. Nothing has changed here for many years, with the exception of about 2 years ago when the list of STEB approved countries was expanded to all countries, but USA has always been on that list.
The only time I've seen a STEB confiscated at LHR was when someone opened the top section containing the receipt, otherwise LHR is fairly laid back about STEBs.