Bad news for the Ebayers Buying from China .

[Kiriakos-GR]

Today I got this message from one of them ..

Recently, due to the backlog of the packages and the raising of the level of Security at Hong Kong's airports, shipping time will be delayed 5-7 days than before. PLS be patient!

If you haven?t received your item and this situation lasts to the 30th day, please DO eBay MSG us. We do not want to give you a bad buying experience even when the shipping is out of our control.

Any question, PLS DO eBay MSG us before you open case or leave the neutral or negative feedback(Coz it hurt relationship and can not solve the problem), We will try to help you solve it. Keep in touch.
Thanks once more for your purchase.

[kaptain_zero]

Kiriakos,

Thanks for the heads up!

This is a new one to me. I have lots of stuff on order from Hong Kong and China and so far everything seems to arrive in Canada quite quickly.... On the other hand, the Vancouver Customs Office sits on my packages for anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks before letting Canada Post deliver them. In stark contrast, the Customs Office in Montreal deals with parcels in a matter of 15 minutes and the packages arrive the following day. Unfortunately, the only reliable way for me to get packages shipped via Montreal from Hong Kong is to get them to use Swiss Post. Swiss Post ships from China to Singapore to Zurich and then finally to Montreal, Canada. That round trip takes a few days longer, but bypassing Vancouver Customs still makes it way faster.

I do recall HK post having some problems around Christmas time and with the every increasing business that China is doing, it's quite likely that HK post is swamped again. China Post is notoriously unreliable.... or at least it has been in the past. I insist that most if not all packages are sent registered to insure that I can prove if something does not arrive.

In the end, I'm happy to risk a few $$ to save big by buying directly from China, but only if the difference is large. I can take the loss of a $20 package if I was saving $80, but if I'm only saving $50 on a $300 item, I'll purchase locally!

Regards

Christian

[Kiriakos-GR]

Hi Christian  

Personally , I have lost the ball ( as we say in Greece about loosing control over an situation ) about delivery times,
from Chinese ebay sellers .

One seller writes  25 days delivery , and I got my item in 13 days.
Another one writes  25 days delivery , and I got my item in 43 days.

I got an charger for every type of mobile phone & PDA battery,
It came damaged in 43 days ,  I complained about it , the seller sends another , in the next 45 days nothing came,
I notify again the seller , and says no problem, I will send another.

Another story , I got an battery for my PDA , comes damaged again (old stock who knows ? ) ,
I notify the seller , he says no problem I will resend , 50 days and nothing came.

The last thee months , I had three incidents of lost or delayed goods.
I have 265 Ebay transactions on ebay , almost all of them was worked out like clock work,
in the last three months , I had  three total chaos experiences .  

[kaptain_zero]

Hi Kiriakos,

Well, a quick surf on the net over to HK Post brings up this bit of news: http://www.hongkongpost.com/eng/publications/notices/2011/20110426a/index.htm

You will note on 22 February there is mention of service problems to Greece and this may be the reason for the message you received. It does sound like you've gotten a bad deal lately though, if three transactions have gone sour.  I suppose it's all part of the global economy..... as we all begin to purchase more and more from around the world, instead of our own back yard... things such as shipping are bound to have growing pains.

Regards

Christian

[Kiriakos-GR]

Well I am talking about long delay and lost items, that never ever happened before.

For something that I have not even the smallest dough about the high quality of service,
are the Greek postal service .

I got envelope from Japan in the world record time of three days ,
there is no issues with the rest of the planet , only with China.

Now in the time of the called Crisis, that Greeks has slow down about ordering things ,
even the post office is not that busy .

In this week I am expecting an big packed from Malaysia ,
It was send last Friday ..  with turbo speed ..
With this one as example , I will benchmark this country too ..  

[kaptain_zero]

Kiriakos,

I hope it all works out for you and that things settle down. I happen to work for Canada Post and I know our problems are not related to our workers but rather to the so called "improvements" to our sorting equipment....... <sigh>

Again, I hope things work out for you...... I've ordered one of those cheap hot air units that Dave just blogged about..... I'm crossing my fingers that it arrives shortly in good condition!

Christian

[RCMR]

I was pretty surprised to receive a bench powersupply I ordered from GoodLuckBuy yesterday -- considering that I only ordered a week ago and it was sent by ChinaPost registered airmail.

It seems that stuff from Mainland China is unaffected by any delays at present (or I got real lucky).

Of course it looked as if the entire Chinese soccer team had used it for goal practice and the metal case was a bit beat-up -- but it still works and for $65 I'm not going to grizzle.

[metalphreak]

Depends on exactly where in China it's coming from. Hong Kong, Shenzhen, etc

I've had things arrive within a week, while others take 4-5weeks.

My most recent purchase from GoodLuckBuy took just over 2weeks to get here (China Post from Shenzhen).

[Kiriakos-GR]

Well on my ebay profile - feedback , I use to write additional info about its buying "experience"  ..

Other than the description of the item it self ,  country that came from + shipping time .

If you have some free time to waste , take a look of it .


http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=kiriakostr&ftab=FeedbackLeftForOthers

[Mechatrommer]

i'm ordering stuff from ebay hongkong/china using EMS. lets see what will happen.

[Mechatrommer]

duh! ebay seller id: eeeDesigner.. one of the item... http://cgi.ebay.com.my/THS3095-THS3095D-Single-High-Voltage-Low-Distortion-/200593820195?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2eb452ca23 ... watch out hongkong!

[EEVblog]

Australia Post announced last month that there will be a week or so delay on packages coming from Hong Kong. But they said it was due to extra clearance time at Australia's end.
I usually get Hong Kong stuff 1-3 days tops, but my last one did take almost 2 weeks.

Dave.

[Mechatrommer]

...but my last one did take almost 2 weeks.

lucky! thats the normal shipping time to my place. with this delay, i dont know. i hope it will not more than 45 days (paypal dispute expiry).

[David]

Got this email yesterday for an Ebay purchase from Hong Kong to the UK: "Since the strict inspection of HK post recently, it will take 10 more days to clear the custom. Hope you could understand and wait for a few days more."
 

[Mechatrommer]

well, my parcel from hongkong arrived in this country, but for some reason, it cannot reach me, status:
"Unsuccessful delivery because no delivery service is available for this product or service at the specified delivery point"
any of you experiencing this?

another event. my TI free sample sent by fedex has been idling in our capital city (thousands km away) for 2 weeks now, i dont know what they are doing there.
what a bad luck! i have another from china, so far so good, but we'll see.

[tnt]

Well, I never had a problem with something coming from china.
But OTOH, one of my recent package from the US, using USPS took 6 weeks to get here ... apparently somebody from USPS misread the destination address and instead of BELGIUM, they sent it to BRASIL ...

[Mechatrommer]

i received my parcels. it turned out something mixed up on my side. looking at the delivery schedule, hongkong post got no problem. they doing their business as usual, without delay.

[Kiriakos-GR]

using USPS took 6 weeks to get here ... apparently somebody from USPS misread the destination address and instead of BELGIUM, they sent it to BRASIL ...

No shit !!    Oh my ... LOL

[RCMR]

That's nothing -- I had a USPS "Priority Airmail" consignment take six months to arrive here.

When it turned up it was very clear that it had been on a very, very long journey.  The box was more battered and bashed than I've ever seen.  It had been re-taped several times (different types of tape) but fortunately the contents were okay.

I would really have loved to tracked that thing with a GPS tracker to find out exactly where it had been on its "incredible journey".

[deephaven]

I was pleasantly surprised when my PCBs from iTead Studio turned up yesterday (25th May) I had only ordered them on the 11th May. So 2 weeks for manufacture and delivery. They said they shipped on 18th. That's a better turnaround than I usually get from the UK! Not sure if the shipment would have passed through HK, or if it got shipped directly from China to UK?

[RayJones]

We received a 65kg consignment from Germany once.
Only problem it wasn't ours, it was only meant to be delivered ~40km door to door in Germany. 

Ultimately, and purely by chance, we found the false consignment had an identical con-note as a legitimate (2kg) package we had received.

So somehow back in Germany someone royally stuffed up, slapping the wrong (duplicate!) con note on the wrong box.

The shipper eventually took it away, then it came back the next day!
Arggghhhh.
A big black texta through the barcode solved that problem the second time around.

I don't know if it ever made it back to whence it came, but by gee I'd hate to see the freight cost for 65kg air express.