Slow airmail from canada to romania ?

[wolf229657]

Hi guys I sent a parcel to a buyer on december 8th ( it probably left on the 9th though ) and this was airmail small parcel, now I have sent many parcels all over europe including romania and none have seemed to take this long. Last week I went to the post office and asked and the clerk informed me that this is normal for it to still not arrive ( and told me to give it another 2 weeks ), and that if I had wanted it to get their by christmas ( even airmail ( I would have to have sent it in late october, I personally find this very strange but I would like some opinions here, sadly I was told I could not get tracking to some of these areas to europe. While I still have roughly 7 days after what the clerk told me ( being about 1 week since ) I am starting to get worried that perhaps something has happened.

Opinions ? can it really take say 5-6 weeks if airmail small parcel from canada to europe in december ? its now the 19th of jan. The most I have ever seen parcels from canada to europe during nov and dec has been around 3 - 3 and a half weeks.

Thank you

[wolf229657]

You are right but its not a buyer I simply asked this here because it had about one of the best chances of getting some fast answers as other research online proved very little info at all.

The postal worker herself is actually quite sick right now with health problems and she admitted to me today that she may have marked it as surface even though I did pay for airmail, so I'm not worried about a buyer chargeback or anything like that. Sadly though most of canada post is like this around the difference provinces I have lived although I've never actually encountered anything like this as a sell on ebay itself.

But I have read some cases where people have payed for airmail and CP has done the pooch and sent it surface, I've also sent stuff surface outside of selling and it usually did take either 6-8 weeks, but I've never in my entire life seen an airmail parcel take more than 4 weeks usually 3 weeks tops.

[wolf229657]

And btw this is a side note on just how incompetent CP can actually be, the past city I lived in had some of the most lazy cp workers I have ever encountered, I once caught the mail lady ( just in time ) about to deliver a parcel due to me into the next door and her excuse was "oh these halls are dark" which was actually untrue I said to her "why are you doing this job then" and quite a few other times on a friday ( drinking night ) they would often run up to the top floor and just throw stuff all over so they could get home to their booze.

For almost 5 years I encountered this sort of stuff and even complained, nothing changed.

Mondays were the worst as it was recovery day so they often did not show up at all or came with little mail.

I cannot stress how lazy CP has become and how overpaid they really are.

[craftycanadianarts]

I used to ship into the back side of Europe fairly regularly including Romania.  And our average by Small Packet air was 17 days.  However I have seen and indeed had it happen that the clerk receiving mail at my local PO does not see the AIR part of the label and drops it into the surface sort box.  I got around this by picking up a stack of the blue stickers and sticking one on each side of every package.

[e_knny]

I have a package shipped airmail to romania from middle of december, and buyer still havent received it

this is the first and last time i ship to romania 

[maximus7001]

"I used to ship into the back side of Europe fairly regularly including Romania.  And our average by Small Packet air was 17 days.  However I have seen and indeed had it happen that the clerk receiving mail at my local PO does not see the AIR part of the label and drops it into the surface sort box.  I got around this by picking up a stack of the blue stickers and sticking one on each side of every package."

This is the best advice. Put the airmail stickers on both sides of the item. We do this and have not had a problem since. Had plenty of problems before doing this.

[momcqueen]

Virtually all my problems (knock LOUDLY on wood) with late- or no-delivery on untraced airmail overseas came to a screeching halt when I stopped taking my parcels to the corner MAILBOX and started to hand them to a person behind a counter at the local postal outlet.

I cannot stress this enough. It had gotten to be obscene.

Either there were issues with break-ins to the particular mailbox I was using by petty thieves from the neighbourhood or someone who took turns driving the mail truck had particularly sticky fingers. The end of my problems coincided also with Canada Post adopting barcodes on the paypal shipping labels which, I think, also encourages recipients to be a little more honest about whether a parcel is in their possession because barcode equals scanned equals someone-somewhere-is-watching. (Despite the barcode stating No Delivery Scan.)

And, over time, my feedback numbers increased so I drew less attention from the less-than-ethical buyers who might equate a low numerical value with gullibility and/or inexperience. 

AND I try to limit my shipping to countries in Europe that have better reputations for Customs processing (and limited mail theft) than others. Plus, I try to make it very clear in my listings that delays at Customs happen (usually for taxes on import) and are beyond my control. Then I make absolutely sure I've correctly completed each Customs form and included a packing slip to ensure speedy processing if it is opened. And then I cross my fingers and toes and hope for the best. If the item is very valuable, I add tracking at my own expense. I just do. I value my mental health more than my paypal account balance. 

Good luck.