One month ago I ordered from The Whistle Shop three Jerry-tweaked whistles (gen, shaw and sweetone). The same day they took the money from my credit card (including 21.25$ for the shipping) and sent me an invoice with a shipping date: 7/14/2006.
Up to now I did not receive anything.
At the beginning I was not worried because I had no idea of the shipping time from US to France (I am Italian, but I am working in France until the end of August). Then I ordered from Burke a D aluminium narrow bore (wonderful whistle:) which arrived 7 days after my order. So I decided to write to the whistle shop asking about the status of my order and the shipping date, but I got no answer.
At the end of August I will move back to Italy. If the whistles will not arrive soon I will loose them. I wrote them about this problem, but I got no answer.
Do you have any idea about the average shipping time from the whistle shop by air mail to Europe? Is this delay normal?
Oh, I know ALL ABOUT shipping times, and three weeks is not terribly unusual!
I try to explain to people that once a package leaves the US there is NO WAY to trace it. I’ve had packages take 3 months to appear on someone’s doorstep (Italy) 5 weeks (England) 11 weeks (Japan where things usually show up in 3 days!) So far in 9 months of shipping nothing has disappeared permanently though.
So unless you spring for Fed Ex, you need to be patient and wait. I would arrange with the local post office to hold the parcel or forward it on. If it can’t be delivered, there is a fair chance that it will be returned but that will be on a slow boat. I had this happen this week when a package to England mailed in April just got back to me after it was accidentally refused.
Best of luck, Stefano. But there is still a chance that it will be delivered to you in France (my experience with France is about 25 days).
When I was living in Spain it was not unusual for things to take a month to arrive from the US. Sometimes I’d get something within three weeks and others times I’d wait five… and of course when it did arrive my favorite part was paying the import tax and the extra little “delivery fee” the post office tacked on… ahh the memories…
(interestingly enough, things I sent from Spain to the US usually arrived in less than two weeks… go figure)
Anyway… as Tyghress has said, be patient and they’ll arrive.
According to the USPS web-site, they have an arrangement with FedEx in Spain (so probably other countries). Can’t remember if it is only for the Express shipping or everything. Makes sense, though. Once something is sent via our postal service, it’s out of their control and delivery is then dependent on the postal service of whatever country the package is going to as well as the backlog at customs. Fed Ex has the structure to track shipments worldwide. I recently sent something to Spain via Fed Ex and it only took a few days. The cost was comparable to sending via US Post Office, probablly because Fed Ex would take over outside of the U.S.
Interestingly, the only shipments I’ve ever had problems with were in the U.S. and were packaged in the round mailing tubes. They dropped off the face of the earth for several weeks even though I’d sent them by priority mail. Does anyone know if the round tubes are more difficult to handle than other types of packages?
Stefano,
My wife regularly sends packages from Cleveland (on Lake Erie) to Modena. The quickest they have arrived was 1.5 weeks. The longest was 6 months. On average they take about three weeks. I don’t know if the delay is caused by the US postal Service or la Posta Italiana, probabilmente tutt’e due. Dove abiti in Italia? Forse andaremo in Italia il prossimo Ottobre. Se sei nella vicinanza Svizzera-Milano-Regio Emilia possiamo visitare e fischiare!
Ciao,
Mike
I ordered one of those Shaws on June 28th, got a confirmation, an apology for a delay (out of product) and an estimate of a 2 week wait.
Still waiting.
gotta love out of stock messages. I do wish in this day and age more stores would take the time to do a little better inventory management online. Or at least go the we will not charge you until we ship method. Same thing happened to me this week but not at a whistle store. Ordered a product, charge hit my credit card, then got an email that the item was out of stock and not expected back in for two or three weeks. sigh.
