About stuff sitting in the customs forever

KindGrind · Post by **KindGrind** » Tue May 26, 2009 8:05 pm

Long story short, I had something mailed to me with tracking from the UK (International signed for, small package, a CD-sized game), and on April 27th it entered the Canadian customs. The message I've been seeing for a month when looking up the tracking number is this:

"International item arrived in Canada and will be reviewed by Customs"

Will be a month tomorrow that the package lies somewhere in the customs (apparently). I expect to be charged custom fees on the thing because it was declared at roughly 120$. Fair enough, I mean, I deserve to get hit from time to time... But the question is, I'm I the only one who's had a parcel wait forever to clear customs? I've called Canada Post and they can't do anything until the parcel has cleared the customs, and the customs told be I should call Information Retrieval... err Canada Post. Did you ever experience something similar, and most importantly, did your package eventually turn up?

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Tue May 26, 2009 8:10 pm

i hate to say it, but if its been there that long, and especially considering its a smaller package, its more than likely been lost at customs....

ive had stuff held at customs for longer than one would think necessary, but never that long.....

sux to here that dude.....what was the game?

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Tue May 26, 2009 8:16 pm

that doesn't sound good

longest i had was three days in customs after it arrived in the country, plus another two days at the local depot

(well, it was supposed to be two days but i gave them some shit on the phone)

they're probably trying to work out how a videogame got declared as $120 value

ring them and find out what's going on; that's an unreasonable amount of time

KindGrind · Post by **KindGrind** » Tue May 26, 2009 8:19 pm

Little Ralph. Lost at the customs? Way to go... What's the use of tracking/signature if the package can still get lost? Good thing it was declared full value, though, so that the sender might be able to make a claim one day when it's "officially" lost (?)

I did try to ring them, but it seems I can't call the customs directly, unless my package was inspected and declared as plutonium, a live crocodile or an ak47 and was put aside as dangerous material, there seems to be no way to locate a package in "the system" (as I was instructed by the lady to call Canada Post, which can't do anything about it until it has cleared).

Anyways. I've pretty much given up on it already, it being a month and all. When in doubt, why don't they send back to the sender? I guess a claim will be possible though as tracking shows squat and my signature will be nowhere to be found...

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Tue May 26, 2009 8:23 pm

packages make it to customs and then its just tossed in a pile....all it would take for a bubble envelope to disappear is fall behind a pile or behind somebodies desk.....

hope it shows up, but i would definitely get the claim process going with the applicable postal service

KindGrind · Post by **KindGrind** » Tue May 26, 2009 8:26 pm

Alrighty, that's what I did earlier today.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Tue May 26, 2009 8:32 pm

also, i seem to recall that the sender has to file the claim with the originating postal service.....

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue May 26, 2009 10:05 pm

If I had bought the game instead this wouldn't have happened!

Ugh, customs...let's march in there and sort them out.

I usually have a good time getting things from Canada...sending things to Canada seems a bit more iffy though (from what I've seen following various sales over the years, although I could just be hallucinating / fabricating memories).

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Tue May 26, 2009 11:43 pm

I sent a single Saturn game from the US of A to Canada (w/o tracking) and it sat in customs for a month. It was safely delievered afterwards.

KindGrind · Post by **KindGrind** » Wed May 27, 2009 12:58 am

This is the kind of testimonials I was kinda looking for...

UnscathedFlyingObject · Wed May 27, 2009 1:03 am

When the shitbomb falls, plain old shit sounds like good news.

Khan · Post by **Khan** » Wed May 27, 2009 1:37 am

i wouldnt be bothered with waiting as long as its not over a couple of weeks, but to get stung by anything more than £15 really would make me feel bad.

I got stung 3 times in a row in the space of a month or two a while back I even made a topic about it, last time i got stung it was for £66! what a joke!

Khan,

sven666 · Post by **sven666** » Wed May 27, 2009 8:12 am

jonny5 wrote:also, i seem to recall that the sender has to file the claim with the originating postal service.....

unless youre insured up over the ears filing a claim will do fuck-all.
when your postoffice says the sender needs to file a claim aswell theyre kindly giving you the finger and implying your matter doesnt mean anything to them.

what you need to do is call customs and ask them to speed your matter up, you should be able to get your customs process number from either the customs office or your domestic post service depending a little how your countrys handling works.
i suggest you call the post first since i guess you only have the tracking number.

CMoon · Post by **CMoon** » Wed May 27, 2009 12:14 pm

Canada customs sucks. It always seems to take a minimum of a week for anything to get through there.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Wed May 27, 2009 1:07 pm

CMoon wrote:Canada customs sucks. It always seems to take a minimum of a week for anything to get through there.

not usually.....our tracking system is much better than USPS, so you can see it as it goes through.....

as a canadian, i obviously have stuff go through customs all the time.....you can see on the tracking info that it generally goes through in minutes

you see it arrive at customs, and then there is another entry an hour or so later saying its been cleared to canada post for delivery

occasionally it takes longer....but even a week is way longer than usual

mortified_penguin · Post by **mortified_penguin** » Wed May 27, 2009 1:18 pm

+1 for Canada customs sucks.

Receiving isn't too hateful but sending up there is a pain in the ass and I stopped doing it years ago.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Wed May 27, 2009 2:29 pm

mortified_penguin wrote:+1 for Canada customs sucks.

Receiving isn't too hateful but sending up there is a pain in the ass and I stopped doing it years ago.

i ve heard a few people say this.....how does it suck?

i have far more problems with USPS service than i do with canada post

im interested to hear what problems people have had with canadian customs....cuz as i said, i live here and everything that comes to me goes through customs and ive not had any problems with it

like almost every time i have something shipped from the states there is no tracking update until it hits canadian customs.....and then a couple hours later when it clears.....then i usually get it the next day.....

mortified_penguin · Post by **mortified_penguin** » Wed May 27, 2009 2:50 pm

My bad experiences come mostly from dealings back in my model kit days.

One instance involved sending a giant box containing 30 or so kits to the far north-western corners of Canada, (at my expense), only to have it returned to me for no reason at all two months later. The guy then wanted me to resend same as before, nope. Screw that.

I'll admit that everything usually works well enough if the buyer doesn't ask me to fuck around with the customs form. How often does that happen though?

Lordstar · Post by **Lordstar** » Wed May 27, 2009 6:02 pm

ive sent loads of stuff to Canada and the worst place for stuff taking ages AND I MEAN AGES two months something took to get from my post office to the customers hands. They are very particular about what you write on the package too. However I have never had any packages go missing which have been sent to Canada. That honor goes to France (worst posties in the world) and second USA however according to my records one third of all the packages ive sent to New Zeland have gone missing but ive only ever sent out three packages so thats not enough to count them as the worst I would need at least ten packages to include them in my shit list.

KindGrind · Post by **KindGrind** » Wed May 27, 2009 9:27 pm

Well, since it was sent ISF (and I read about it), it seems it's insured full value up to 100 GBP naturally, and up until 500 GBP if you purchase extra insurance. The sender is informed on this matter, is very helpful and filing a claim. Let's see what happens. I have never had anything lost in the mail in roughly 400 transactions online, half of them for recieving stuff. I always thought Canada Post did a pretty good job reliability-wise, but they are terribly expensive.

Kollision · Post by **Kollision** » Wed May 27, 2009 9:42 pm

I've had packages delayed in all areas. Examples:
- My Gashapon set from NCSX took almost 2 weeks just to leave the US.
- Some items from Hong Kong take 20 days to arrive.
- Items sent by common mail sometimes arrive faster than by EMS.
- Locally I've had packages held in customs for weeks without being notified (the note they leave is very small and can be easily lost).

Currently I have an SMS Power Strike II lost between Span and Brazil - theoretically it's in the air, because it left Spain but never got here!

It's the only problematic item (that was actually sent) in approx. 200 buys.

1 out of 200 seems reasonable for a failure rate, I just wish it wasn't with Power Strike II....

Lordstar · Post by **Lordstar** » Wed May 27, 2009 10:07 pm

My exprience with Hong Kong has been fantastic. I buy something on the Sunday and three days later on the Wednesday it arrives. there cheap fast and the sellers in hong kong are fantastic at wrapping there items. all that polystyrene and plastic string and the custom boxes which seem like there made for the items

CMoon · Post by **CMoon** » Wed May 27, 2009 11:42 pm

jonny5 wrote:
mortified_penguin wrote:+1 for Canada customs sucks.

Receiving isn't too hateful but sending up there is a pain in the ass and I stopped doing it years ago.
i ve heard a few people say this.....how does it suck?

This is, as the above poster said, a 'sending' issue. Every time I mail anything to Canada it gets delayed a week. Still, who can blame them, if I were Canada I'd put a huge wall between myself and those fucking crazy Americans.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Wed May 27, 2009 11:59 pm

they wouldnt let us

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu May 28, 2009 12:20 am

I guess my fellow American blue-bloods wanted to flee there from the Mexicans first, and put up the next wall later.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Thu May 28, 2009 12:40 am

nah....we have oil and lumber.....sooner or later they will have to come in and protect us from our socialist government

escadrille · Post by **escadrille** » Fri May 29, 2009 6:44 am

I live in Canada and I've received mail-ordered goods my whole life without incident. I think it's one of those luck-of-the-draw things.

Sounds like they just lost your parcel, and will send it along when it turns up. Also, if it's electronics and the customs agent who happened to look at it has no idea what it is (a PCB for example), they might have sent it to some specialist department to make sure it isn't plans for the Al Qaeda death star or something, which will naturally cause a delay.