Postage Delays

[emperor]

I sent 2 or 3 boxes by surface mail prior to my return home to Ireland from Japan.
They were sent on the 28th of July by Surface mail; which is supposed to take 4 weeks - but its been 5 weeks and 3 days now...
Have any of you experienced any delays when using Japans postal service?

[Steve Bildermann]

Actually Japan Post is one of the top three post systems for speed in the world. Blame the sorting hubs in the EC and the US. They are super-slow because of many layers of extra 'security' checks and plain old over staffing and inefficiency.

Items sent to Japan are very quickly delivered *once* a item clears the overseas hubs. Japan sorts at the local level and does not use hubs.

[emperor]

so what youre saying is...

..my priceless possesions are either sitting next to a keg of guinness in the corner of a local post office that doubles as a pub in a small village, on an island off the west coast of ireland
...or a hairy, strongly smelling kazakhstani man is rummaging through my things in a field next to the corpse of his deceased wife??


I figured as much...

[kamome]

It's not unusual to have surface mail delivered as late as 3 months after sending it. Depends on a variety of circumstances, including bottlenecks at a port of entry/exit, security concerns, etc. But I think a 4 week delivery period is a bit too much to expect. I think you should start to get nervous once 6-8 weeks have elapsed.