I'm pretty confident your Chit Chat Internationals are not coming to Toronto by truck! Not sure they are coming to Toronto at all in fact.
The service has been pretty reliable for me but there are always a few that seem to take more than they should. Since I've been using them I've had 2 lost (in 4 years), one to Germany and one to Australia.
My historical loss rate on Overseas is about 1 in 500 and that rate hasn't changed much in almost 40 years of mail-order no matter who I'm shipping with.
Did you complete the customs form "appropriately"?
@ricarmic wrote:
@musicyouneed wrote:Yes, I completed the customs form like always. The value was under $12 so that can't be the hold up. This may be one that has just got lost. This will be my first this year out of about 600 sent so I should be thankful. One year I had 3 get lost. If I remember correctly all that got lost were during the months of Nov - Jan. Maybe it is postal people looking for Christmas presents, who knows.
I'll post at the end of the week as to what happened.
I am also looking for that email that a seller sent:
something like this: that they are repaying them out of their own pocket and that if the item ever shows up to let them know. I forget what the exact wording was.
Hi!
Regarding customs, I don't think it always matters what you wrote on the package value or type, it matters if they believe that. If via the scan they think otherwise it might cause them to open it to check to see, That might delay it more. Having said this in your case I doubt it but one never knows.
If it was my letter that you'd talking about, here's a link to my thread with my slow delivery form letters, as always feel free to use whatever works for you!
(PS I adjusted the wording to say "not insured" instead of "self insured" when I've been using this lately...)
Oh yeah it definitely matters, it matters BIG TIME.
Going by the OP's answer to my question, it means that one possible reason for the delay is eliminated.
Yes, I completed the customs form like always. The value was under $12 so that can't be the hold up. This may be one that has just got lost.
It's still only been 24 days since mailing, while this is a bit unusual it's still too early to call it "lost" unless of course the buyer isn't willing to wait any longer.
@ricarmic wrote:
Hi Rec, I see that my response may have been misinterpreted, what I meant by "doesn't matter what you wrote on the package" was that the customs folks may not believe what was written on the customs form and it may have gone through extra processing because of that, ie the customs folks either from the scan or whatever might not believe the customs declaration is being honest.
I see that the way I wrote it might infer it doesn't matter what is written on the form and I of course also agree that it matters BIG TIME.
THX for pointing that out....
I get what you are saying and thanks for clarifying. You're right, "appropriate" completion of the customs forms needs to be done with some thought. The OP sells items which commonly are sold for pretty low values and will breeze through customs 99.9999999% of the time. Then there are people who will try to put a $10 value on an items which generally sell for hundreds....not many customs people will be fooled by that.
@ricarmic wrote:
Yep, I don't know what DVDs look like through a scanner, but if there's labels or something on the case that scan weird going through it might make a difference and cause them to check closer.
I know in my world, a special commemorative stamped cover (envelope) that also happens to have a special commemorative coin in it, I would think of as being "postage stamps" because it was meant more for a stamp collector, but of course if it was viewed via the scanner the person would see the coin and think the customs form was wrong, which technically it is as I wouldn't have said that it had "money" in it.
I have to be very careful that I'm remembering stuff like that for some of the combination style collectibles that merge philately and numismatics or something else....
Well only an extremely small number of packages are scanned and of those an even smaller number of opened. That is even more true of a package that would originate in Canada as opposed to say Yemen, Afghanistan, Thailand or other places where bombs or drugs might originate.
A #$0 bubble envelope with a cd or dvd inside, declared at +/- $10, shipping from Canada, the odds of it being inspected are probably 1 in 100,000 if that (unless you are shipping it to North Korea). If it was scanned you know what it would look like? It would look like a cd or dvd!
Over the years I have purchased hundreds and hundreds of items from outside Canada and I can't remember a single one that was opened by customs, even for the large commercial shipments I used to import, having even one shipment a year examined would be unusual and that would be out of several hundred shipments.
