Is 4 weeks postage time too long?

[bright.ton42]

My item from Hong Kong still hasn't arrived after nearly 4 weeks.  I've bought from Hong Kong and China before and always got the

items within about 2 weeks.   This guy keeps saying to wait and I'm waiting and waiting. 

Should I wait longer or put it to dispute?

[ozzie*2013]

well mate thats all you can do other than email him about the time length and complain to ebay as well, as they will inform him of their postage rules

[maranock]

All of my overseas parcels are taking longer than usual at the moment no matter what country they are coming from. It can only get worse coming up to Christmas. We are all going to have to be patient.

[ozzie*2013]

a good point maranock, only a month to xmas , but its always been slow from china in my experiences until i tell the seller you have a 2 week time frame, personally i think they post in the lowset cost , longest time delivered section od china post has to offer to save a dollar, we all know how tight chinese are with their money 

[the_great_she_elephant]

I bought an item from China (Shanghai) on 15th October and the estimated delivery date wasestimated at  between  Mon. 24 Nov. and Tue. 2 Dec.

It actually arrived on Monday 10th Nov. That's only a couple of days short of four weeks.

[lyndal1838]

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@ozzie*2013 wrote:

yes thats a fair comment, but everyone knows how chinas postage is , ive been waiting 3 weeks now for somehting, i bought something else through germany the other week on standard post and it was here within a week .....go figure ?

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Mail from Germany is always quick as it is handled by DHL.  It is never fair to compare German mail with any other country.

[modestbods]

OP, I buy a lot of items from numerous different China Sellers, and have done for many years.

For free/economy post from China, whilst there are some sellers that are able to consistently get it to you in 2-3 weeks, 3-4 weeks is the norm for most, but sometimes it can take up to 5-6 weeks.

You haven't mentioned what time frame the seller actually states in the body of their listing (I don't mean the eBay estimate on the listing landing page). It doesn't matter what estimate eBay gives, as it's often overly optimistic. If the seller states it's 3 weeks, then you should allow them the 3 weeks, if it's 4 weeks allow them 4 weeks, etc... most decent China sellers give fairly realistic delivery estimates. When you buy from a seller you have implicitly agreed to the delivery estimates that they give in their listing (if different from ebays estimates), so you should abide by that time frame.

 Just make sure you open a dispute with Paypal before the 45 days are up (I prefer to open it by day 42) and do not close it until the goods have arrived (no matter what the seller tells/asks you to do), if they still haven't arrived within 20 days after opening the dispute then escalate it to a claim & get a refund. You can always pay the seller again if it arrives after that time.

[i-love-my-sheep]

I buy quite a few mineral specimens from China and the sellers are very clear in their listings about shipping times. Most of the time they are pretty close. On average, 3-4 weeks, but sometimes 5-6 weeks. They all have something similar to the screenshot below in their listings.

Most of my sellers have 100% or 99.9% feedback and 4.9 or higher DSR's. They do post when they've marked as posted as I have compared the date on the package to the date it was marked as posted.

One time I hadn't been keeping an eye on my purchase history and I noticed well after 45 days that my shipment hadn't arrived. I immediately sent a message to the seller to let them know, not expecting much of a response and within half an hour I received a full refund. That was actually the first time I had bought from that seller too, so I was quite shocked.

I have since bought many more things from them and everything has arrived. The initial one got returned to sender for some reason. If it had've arrived here, I would've had no hesitation in resending them the money.

I think it depends on the seller as to how quick you should take action. There are plenty of dodgy ones out there! If they have plenty of feedback for INR, then definitely open a case in plenty of time.