Parcel lost between US and Sydney

[melinda]

Hi all,
Thought I might tell you all of my sad tale of woe and see if you might have any advice.
About 3 weeks ago I ordered a beautiful down jacket from a US company.
Their website advised me to use USPS, which I did.
So, they send the parcel to USPS. I receive a tracking number and see that the parcel left the States.
Then zilch, zero, nada!
NO tracking updates, NO nothing!
I contact the company and they wouldn't do any thing until 10 working days have passed. Fair enough.
After 10 working days passed, and a number of increasingly colourful emails, I was told by their sales person:

"I have contacted USPS and started the trace to find your missing order. They will be in contact with Australian post to try and locate your package, they have 24 days to find it. If after 24 days have passed and you still have not received your package or we receive notice from USPS it is missing we will then discussed either replacement or a refund. I'm sorry for the inconvenience and if you have any other questions please don't hesitate to ask."

Has anybody had this happen to them in the past?
What happened? How did it all work out?
Personally, I'm thinking that 24 days is too long!!!!
Personally, I'm thinking why don't they just send me another one????
Personally, I'm starting to get a little annoyed
What do you guys thinK???
Melinda
PS Feel free to send me a private message for the name of the company involved!

[Nuts]

..

[Jellybean]

Hi all,
Thought I might tell you all of my sad tale of woe and see if you might have any advice.
About 3 weeks ago I ordered a beautiful down jacket from a US company.
Their website advised me to use USPS, which I did.
So, they send the parcel to USPS. I receive a tracking number and see that the parcel left the States.
Then zilch, zero, nada!
NO tracking updates, NO nothing!
I contact the company and they wouldn't do any thing until 10 working days have passed. Fair enough.
After 10 working days passed, and a number of increasingly colourful emails, I was told by their sales person:

"I have contacted USPS and started the trace to find your missing order. They will be in contact with Australian post to try and locate your package, they have 24 days to find it. If after 24 days have passed and you still have not received your package or we receive notice from USPS it is missing we will then discussed either replacement or a refund. I'm sorry for the inconvenience and if you have any other questions please don't hesitate to ask."

Has anybody had this happen to them in the past?
What happened? How did it all work out?
Personally, I'm thinking that 24 days is too long!!!!
Personally, I'm thinking why don't they just send me another one????
Personally, I'm starting to get a little annoyed
What do you guys thinK???
Melinda
PS Feel free to send me a private message for the name of the company involved!

Hi Melinda,

'Hope the weekend went well!

Re the jacket - don't stress too much just yet! USPS are slower and have a much less sophisticated tracking system than businesses like UPS and Fedex (and are consequently, much cheaper!). They are notoriously slow to post updates. I often haven't had any tracking updates between the parcel leaving the US and arriving at my place! The US postal system also seems to have been pretty slow recently (e.g., something I ordered that usually takes about 10 business days to arrive just took 21 business days). I've bought stuff from the US more than 50 times and have never had anything go missing, I'm sure it will turn up (but understand your frustration, if you've ordered something you've been drooling over for ages you want it NOW .... or as soon as possible thereafter! ).

Cheers,

JB

[melinda]

Hi nuts,
The last tracking notice was on Oct 17. (Believe me, I have been checking it.)
It appears to have never arrived in Australia, so how can Australian Post help???

[melinda]

Hi Jellybean,
How are you?
The weekend was good, thanks. (Bit hot! We headed for the pub on Sunday morning for breakfast instead of the bush! Mmmmh, I wonder if I loose leader brownie points for that!)
Hope you are right. I am feeling a certain satisfaction in venting my frustration publicly.
If this particular company's customer service had been a bit more helpful in answering my questions in a timely fashion I may have been a little cooler about it all.

[MJD]

I've never had a problem with stuff coming form the US. I have had trouble with Australia Post a number of times although to be fair most of the packages have had an error in the address. They certainly don't seem to try and resolve this themselves. I had a GPS sent from Sydney to Hobart with an incorrect postcode (supplier's error). Despite the postcode being for QLD the package got to Hobart and then sat in limbo while both I and the supplier tried to find out exactly where it was. It arrived after considerable effort on both our parts.

Good luck and just keep pestering them. In customer service it's often the difficult and noisy ones who get the quickest response.

[stepbystep]

Hi Melinda,

Not sure if you have been following this thread
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1130&start=30
I have a similar problem, only I NEED them by friday, seems one of the packages has cleared customs today and the other is still in limbo.
A US led enquiry found a logjam around this time with USPS, so don't give up hope - frustrating as hell I must say, so I empathise.

Try not to think about it for a week and it might just sort itself out - both my items "left the US" on Oct 15, must be coming by sail!!!

Grrrrrrrr

[Nuts]

..

[Ciaran]

Hi melinda,

I've have ordered a few things from the states and found that most arrive in the 24 to 30 day time frame. I got worried with the first order and did the tracking thing with little result, but then out of the blue it arrived at my post office.

I would be inclined to give it a little more time and patience( not easy I know). I have'nt bought a down jacket though, just for this reason. There are many out there who might like to acquire one of these for free.

I have a golite pack on it's way as we speak, So I shall be watching this with interest now.

Good luck.

Ciaran

[melinda]

Hi stepbystep,
I've found that the parcels usually take longer to get from Sydney to Wollongong than they take to get from the States to Sydney. How frustrating is that????
The funny thing is that my friend had a Nallo sent from the States by USPS a few days after I ordered the jacket and that has already arrived, no problem.
Ahhhhh.........

Thanks for your encouragement Ciaran,
I'm taking slow deep breaths here.
Calm, calm.......

[Jellybean]

Hi Jellybean,
How are you?
The weekend was good, thanks. (Bit hot! We headed for the pub on Sunday morning for breakfast instead of the bush! Mmmmh, I wonder if I loose leader brownie points for that!)
Hope you are right. I am feeling a certain satisfaction in venting my frustration publicly.
If this particular company's customer service had been a bit more helpful in answering my questions in a timely fashion I may have been a little cooler about it all.

I reckon you might get brownie points for adapting your plans to meet the needs of the group/circumstances! (I flew back into Sydney late on Sunday night and was surprised how warm it still was. Figured it must have been hot during the day!)

I'm sure your jacket will turn up.

If you're feeling the need to do something, perhaps check with customs in Sydney to see if it is stuck there? Do you know how the jacket was listed on the customs docs? (As a "down jacket", "jacket", "clothing"?).

Not much help now but I tend to just list any clothing items as "clothing" these days and don't specify what sort of clothing it is. No problems to date.

[dancier]

Just because it's been dispatched, doesn't mean it will get to you soon but it will eventually come.

They may have sent the items by ship, that happened to me once, hope it doesn't happen to you.

[Turfa]

Not wanting to be negative...but that's one of the risks you have to accept if you buy stuff overseas rather than going into a local store & walking out with the item under your arm.
I have bought a lot of stuff from the US & have had the occassional shipping delay, but I consider that is the price I pay for trying to get stuff cheaper.

Hope it all works out OK.

[melinda]

Gee Dancier,
That's encouraging......
How long did your parcel take to get to you???

Hi Turfa,
I guess I understand that....
I have also brought a fair bit of gear from the States with no problem.
I guess matters were made worse by the fact that the original responses from this company's customer service dept. were not particularly helpful.

[melinda]

HI Nuts,
Missed you post earlier.
I think you are right.
I will get more proactive on this side. Can't hurt.
I'll start bugging Aust Post tomorrow!

[ninjapuppet]

As you know, Aust post usually leaves a card behind in your letter box if you're not home, so you may collect the item later.

However last week when i had a card left for me to pick something up, i went to the post office and they had 3 packages for me. 2 of them had been lying there for 2 weeks. I asked the lady at the post office why a card wasnt left for the other 2 items but she didnt know why since deliveries in my area are contracted out. just shows that sometimes items actually can, be lying at the post office without you knowing

I wouldnt worry about it too much Melinda - give it another week.
Ive got a few posted via "international letter" from sept still not here. one Priority package did take a month to reach me because it was in customs for about 1.5 weeks. Ive never had problems from the US, but ordering items from ebay in HK is a totally different matter altogether! ive got 4 paypal dispute resolutions going on right now with ebay sellers in HK.

[melinda]

Hi ninjapuppet,
Ok, I'm definitely not going to start buying gear from ebay in HK.
How did that all happen???

[photohiker]

Too early to be stressing IMO.

Shortest from the US for me was 4 days, order to delivery. Longest was just recently: Shipped August 19th, Arrived October 18th.

Unless item is sent express (priority) I don't expect it inside 2 weeks. Sometimes I get surprised and sometimes it runs over that time.

Hassling Auspost won't help. Worth ringing the local office though in case the delivery note blew away.

[Azza]

Average for me this year is about a week and a half to two weeks to get something delivered from the US using USPS. So three weeks is nothing really, every man and his dog is probably ordering stuff at the moment while the dollar is high so I wouldn't be surpised if the volume of imports has gone through the roof and there is backlog both in freight capacity and customs processing. From what I've seen with my packages its not unusual for it to hit australia in a couple of days and then spend more time getting from Sydney down to Hobart.
The difference between UPS and FedEx compared to USPS is basically you're paying twice as much to ensure delivery is faster and that the postal workers don't nick your stuff. ( Bit of an over exageration...) I think UPS and FedEx also have priority customs processing in Aus so they can get their parcels through quicker.

Not to worry you but don't suppose you saw this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4372&p=55853&hilit=down+jacket+customs#p55853

[cams]

As others have said. I've never had anything not arrive by USPS. Priority and Express have never taken longer than 2 weeks. First Class can take a few weeks. UPS and DHL are freakin amazing. I received an entire exhaust system for my car in less than 3 days from UPS.

On the other hand, I'm not so sure about Canada Post. I had a fairly small package shipped from there last year. For starters the price was heaps so I ended up having to use surface mail (boat). 2 months went by, didn't hear anything. Luckily the private seller was very helpful and got onto the post office who said you have to wait 3 months before making a lost post claim. So I waited 3 months. Still nothing. Anyway, luckily I paid the extra $15 for insurance. After the 3 months they started an investigation. It took another 2.5 months for them to decide that yes it was lost and I finally got my $300 back.

[melinda]

Spoke to Australia Post today. They said give it time. Backlog from the States at the moment.
I guess my main complaint at the moment is that the info the company gave me about time frames was so inaccurate.
Definitely will stick with Fedex next time around!

[Azza]

International is a whole different ball game to domestic freight.
Packages can get delayed for a variety of reasons - customs, backlog etc. It sucks when it happens, but that is the risk you take to save a few bucks by ordering from overseas.
Maybe you saw something in the new recently about suspicious packages being posted to the US in the mail?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/wo ... 5946713494

Something like this can cause the whole freight system to grind to a halt, which is pretty much outside the control of the postal services.

[ILUVSWTAS]

I can say at work today everyone was told to brance for a big week.

[stepbystep]

I can say at work today everyone was told to brance for a big week.

Pull some strings! I want my stuff by Friday!!!!

[Azza]

Last time I picked up a package from the US at the post office there was a guy there putting in a damage claim, his parcel clearly marked USPS..
The box was all chewed up and crushed. The postal guy asked 'Are the contents damaged?'
The guy responsed... 'There are tyre marks on the box.. someone has driven over it''
kinda amusing until I saw my box on the shelf.. and it was smashed up as well... ah, cr@p!

Thankfully everything was okay....

[dancier]

Gee Dancier,
That's encouraging......
How long did your parcel take to get to you???

It took ages for it to arrive, I canceled the order, got the refund and the supplier refused to do business with me for few months, so I went elsewhere and bought the product, only to find it on my doorstep three months later. I buy lot's of stuff offshore and that's the only mishap I've had.

Another thing I've learnt is sometimes they say the item has been dispatched when it hasn't, just to keep the customers off there back.

[ILUVSWTAS]

Last time I picked up a package from the US at the post office there was a guy there putting in a damage claim, his parcel clearly marked USPS..
The box was all chewed up and crushed. The postal guy asked 'Are the contents damaged?'
The guy responsed... 'There are tyre marks on the box.. someone has driven over it''
kinda amusing until I saw my box on the shelf.. and it was smashed up as well... ah, cr@p!

Thankfully everything was okay....

Sometimes we play basketball with the boxes or use them as witches hats on a rally course if they are the right size.

[melinda]

Wow, parcel is finally in Australia.
Checked for tracking update today and found:

Into Foreign Customs, November 02, 2010, 10:57 pm, AUSTRALIA
Arrived Abroad, November 02, 2010, 10:56 pm, AUSTRALIA
International Dispatch, October 17, 2010, 12:12 pm, ISC SAN FRANCISCO (USPS)
Arrival
Electronic Shipping Info Received, October 15, 2010

Wonder what can happen between Customs and Wollongong?????

[stepbystep]

Wonder what can happen between Customs and Wollongong?????

Hey Melinda Scarp arrived minutes ago
Took 22 days from when it left Tarptent in California, and 3 days from Sydney to Hobart so hang in there!
Should have just enough time to figure out how to use it before Friday - all is forgiven USPS(United States Post Slow).

Now where's my Neo-air!!!

[melinda]

Heh step by step,
Really pleased to hear about the Scarp arriving.
I'm sure you'll figure it out in time for Friday.
Don't forgive United States Preposterously Slow for anything!
I hate it when people tell you one thing and then make excuses for why it doesn't happen.
Let us know how the tent goes. And I'll let you know about my beautiful down jacket as soon as it arrives!!!!
It cleared customs OK, whew!!!!
(DId you see the link posted earlier:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4372&p=55853&hilit=down+jacket+customs#p55853
Now that really was a horror story!)
And by the way, how good was ILUVSWTAS with his:

ILUVSWTAS wrote:
I can say at work today everyone was told to brance for a big week.

He must have pulled some strings for you!