International postage delayed due to COVID-19

[chameleon54]

Just a heads up that my local Australia Post advised yesterday that the COVID-19 virus is causing extensive delays to outbound and inbound international mail deliveries. I am messaging all OS buyers to inform them to expect delays. It wont stop the worry worts and freebie hunters from putting in claims, but it might help slow the " item not recieved " problem. 

[madebya2]

Thanks very much! I've been wondering when this will start to happen 😞 what are you thoughts about domestic mail? I'm really worried when we start to see delays in Aus post locally. Do you think it is possible that mail might shut down at some point for a period of time? I'm super concerned about that.

[unique_pre-driven]

Yes, my post office told me the same thing.   Posting 6 items to the USA and Germany, lucky they are not through ebay but still a worry.  Maybe you can do some deals with toilet paper.

[south.coffee]

Yes, the cargo ships are busy 'plying' the world with woodchip for paper products and the planes are 'plying' the world delivering toilet paper.  No room for mail... !

[chameleon54]

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@madebya2 wrote:

Thanks very much! I've been wondering when this will start to happen 😞 what are you thoughts about domestic mail? I'm really worried when we start to see delays in Aus post locally. Do you think it is possible that mail might shut down at some point for a period of time? I'm super concerned about that.

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I havnt had that discussion with the PO, but my personal opinion is that post is an essential service and agencies will be doing their best to keep it running reliably even in the unlikely event that Australia goes into fairly stringent lock down. In European countries that are in advanced lock down, food shops, chemists and essential industries are still operating, although staffing is an issue.

[padi*0409]

chamo, I've got a parcel that took 3 days to get from LA to Sydney and has now not moved since the 27th of February....

I'm not even going to go to what's happening in my local IGA...............GRRRRR.

[lotsamagsnbags]

when posting item to germany this morning, they commented not an issue currently with outgoing international mail but with distribution at the other end there likely could be

[lupercal]

For me this been the case for some time already with my overseas postings - though OzPost have been blaming extreme weather conditions rather than CV in most of the countries last time i looked. My shipments have been twice as slow as normal, when they've arrived at all. The quickest of them have been 5 weeks, and I've had some take 7 weeks. Even my last CD sent to the USA took 5 weeks.

I've taken to asking international customers (especially in Europe) if they'rf sure they want to go ahead with the purchase, explaining the likely long delay and offering to cancel/refund if they want. A few have taken me up on it.

I'm very close to just removing international postage altogether for the forseeable future.  I don't know whether many European  countries are even going to have postal services in another three weeks. Or for that matter, what ours will be like, considering how many PO's are privatde franchises. 

[love_of_cars]

Same here with the delays already happening, since January. Some items have taken 6 to 8 weeks to arrive in UK, USA and Europe.

[zanadoo_56]

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@padi*0409 wrote:

chamo, I've got a parcel that took 3 days to get from LA to Sydney and has now not moved since the 27th of February....

I'm not even going to go to what's happening in my local IGA...............GRRRRR.

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I feell your pain.  Tracked parcel was departing from the UK on 29 Feb......and there hasn't been an update since.

2 untracked parcels (sellers did not offer tracking) also from the UK......fingers crossed is all I can do.

I won't mention my regular online grocery deliveries from Coles and Woolies were both cancelled....if you're not going into any IGA woes.