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First post, by feipoa

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Has anyone else noticed their international mail deliveries come to a crawl since the COVID-19 pandemic? Even something simple like a case badge in a letter envelope have been en-route for 5 weeks and appear missing. I haven't received any international eBay shipments for 5 weeks. I ordered something from eBay Canada on the other side of the country and it arrived in a few days. Ordered some VGA pass-through cables on Amazon Prime and those usually get here in 2 days - it's been 2 weeks. So I was wondering if it was just me, just Canada, or is everyone else feeling the postal crawl?

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Reply 1 of 12, by ShovelKnight

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Definitely same thing here in Ireland. Ordered a custom-made Sulzer PSU from Bulgaria 4 weeks ago and still don't know when it's going to show up, in normal times it would have been here 3 weeks ago.

Reply 2 of 12, by brownk

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If your stuff is in air mail, tough luck. Afaik, most international postal services heavily rely on cargo bays of passenger flights. Sadly, they are all gone, and air mails are grounded.

Few weeks ago, I was finally able to buy some memory chips I had looked out for a long while. My seller's shippment got returned after few days, and he told me to go with Fedex or forget it.

I gave up once I saw their estimate.

Reply 3 of 12, by wiretap

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I'm in the US. So far I only have 1 eBay item on hold from international shipping, and it is coming from Poland. Over the past 3 weeks I have received shipments from Sweden, UK, Germany, and China. There was a little longer delay than usual (less than 1 week extra), but it may vary country to country, and which shipping carrier is used. It would be best to contact the seller and even the parcel carrier to see if they know of any delays.

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Reply 4 of 12, by Big Pink

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ShovelKnight wrote on 2020-04-24, 12:48:

Definitely same thing here in Ireland. Ordered a custom-made Sulzer PSU from Bulgaria 4 weeks ago and still don't know when it's going to show up, in normal times it would have been here 3 weeks ago.

I was ready to dismiss this thread as peculiarly North American. I'm in Scotland and stuff I've bought in the last month from Germany, Italy, and indeed Ireland have actually all arrived ahead of schedule. Might be related to customs just waving packages through at the moment without levying duty. On international mail, Royal Mail notes:

There are significant delays to a number of countries right now due to a lack of available transport links and suspension of certain country’s postal operations.

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Reply 5 of 12, by imi

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afaik packages between the EU and UK are still customs free until at least the end of the year anyways.

I've got my last package from the US right after borders were closed... haven't ordered anything from overseas since.

packages within europe seem to be mostly fine apart from a few regions, a package from italy (from a fellow vogoner 😉 ) arrived within 4 days

Reply 6 of 12, by brostenen

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I have. UK ships fairly fast to Denmark. Italy not so much. As an example, I bought something on the 28'th of Feb. and it arived today. (Nearly two month's)

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Reply 7 of 12, by Srandista

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Well, for me even UK had been problematic lately. I was ordering cable (in a envelope, mind you) at 19th of March and it didn't arrived until 15th of April. Usually it takes around a week to get stuff from there to me (in Czech Republic).

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Reply 8 of 12, by Bondi

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My package is stuck in Japan. Japan post has stopped almost any international delivery. The only available option is seamail. But it takes months.

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Reply 9 of 12, by feipoa

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I'm looking on eBay at the tracking for a SCSI HDD that shipped from Hong Kong on April 22. It has an expected delivery date of July 12th. This is crazy. Isn't there only a 2 month window for eBay to get involved for packages which don't arrive? It also seems that eBay relies on its expected delivery date as a means to determine if the buyer can open a case. If the expected delivery date is after than 2 month window, scamming sellers can engage in easy fraud. To be safe, I've decided to cease all international eBay purchases.

Saw this message on the Canada Post website:

International mail and parcel services are severely impacted by the evolving COVID-19 situation. Many international postal operators are experiencing delays and some have suspended operations. However, Canada Post continues to deliver all mail and parcels once they arrive in Canada. If you have ordered something from abroad, you may experience a longer than normal waiting period. You can check the status of trackable postal items coming to Canada from an international sender here. If you need more information, please contact the sender.

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Reply 10 of 12, by Fujoshi-hime

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brownk wrote on 2020-04-24, 13:17:

If your stuff is in air mail, tough luck. Afaik, most international postal services heavily rely on cargo bays of passenger flights. Sadly, they are all gone, and air mails are grounded.

Yeah it's a real mess. A LOT of freight was actually moved in the cargo holds of passenger airliners. There's dedicated air freight of course but a lot of that is inundated with the jump in international express shipments of medical equipment and PPE. While DHL, UPS and others have their own air fleets, very few national postal services have their own.

Here in Canada, Air Canada recently stripped the seating out of five 777-300-ER's for light cargo hauling. That's pretty desperate if you think about it; The aircraft has no cargo door for that area, so you can't move large containers in and out of the cabin like you would with a real air freighter so it'll be loaded up box by box You'd also be limited in weight you can transport because you can't secure it as well as you can in containers that are easy to secure to the deck. Pretty sure they're mostly for hauling PPE which is light and easy to secure with netting.

There's even a lot of fresh foods that are transported the same way that are becoming scarce as a result. Frankly, I'm amazed that I can buy avocados and bananas in Canada right now.

Reply 11 of 12, by Caluser2000

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Things are fine here in New Zealand.

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Reply 12 of 12, by Srandista

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I bought some small package in UK recently, and seller immediately sent me message (starting with "Do you speak English?" :D ), that shipment will most likely take a long time, due to current situation, and if I'm ok with that, or if so want to cancel the order.

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