I’ve assembled some data on international shipping delivery times, for a sample of real BMOW customers over the past few months. The table shows destination countries, sorted by median delivery time. The listed time includes the shipping itself, customs inspection, and any hold time at the local destination post office waiting for the buyer to claim the package. It’s the total door-to-door delivery time. All packages are shipped via US Postal Service First Class Package International service, which is the only reasonably-priced international shipping option available to me.

As you can see, the typical delivery time varies enormously. The good news is that most countries are faster than my two-weeks generic estimate for international delivery. For the countries where BMOW has the greatest number of sales, the median delivery time is about 8 days. Poland, Mexico, and Portugal have longer delivery times, but they’re still tolerable, and I don’t have many sales in those countries anyway.

Then there’s shipping for Brazil and Italy. Ugh. Let me draw your attention to that 49-day worst case time for Brazil, and the whopping 96 DAY worst case for Italy. When a package disappears into the bowels of the postal system for 2-3 months, customers don’t blame the post office. They blame me. It’s a difficult and awkward position, and I often need to spend large amounts of time communicating with the buyer and attempting to track the package. Sometimes I have to send replacement packages or provide refunds, even though I have no control over the postal delays.

I’ve considered various ideas for the “Italy Problem”, from an express shipper option (much more expensive, and inconvenient for me), to a surcharge on orders to Italy, Brazil, and a few others (would compensate for the greater number of problem deliveries, but would be unpopular), to halting shipments to those countries completely (forcing those customers to use a 3rd-party freight forwarding service from the US).

 
Misrouted Packages

While collecting the data for this table, I discovered several instances where a package was sent to the wrong country, even the wrong continent! Eventually it was re-routed to the correct country, but the extra side-trip added several weeks to the delivery time. Check out these tracking histories. Follow the links and click the “Tracking History” tab:

Canadian package sent to Brazil
German package sent to Canada
French package sent to Mexico

In every case, the address on the package was correct. What appears to have happened is that the package was sent to the same country as another one of my international shipments made on the same day. I’m not sure how that could happen – surely the sorting process is automated?

 
Unclaimed/Refused Packages

Many countries impose an import tax or fees on merchandise purchased from another country. In such cases, typically the package will be held at the customer’s local post office, and they’ll be sent a letter informing them that the package is ready for pick-up. Then the customer will visit the local post office, pay the taxes, and claim the package.

Most local post offices will hold a package for 1 or 2 weeks. If the customer doesn’t claim the package within that time window, it will usually be returned to me. Unclaimed packages happen for a variety of reasons: the customer was away on holiday when the package arrived, or they never received the notification letter, or they forgot about it, or they declined to claim the package because they were unhappy about the taxes. Whatever the reason, unclaimed packages are always a giant pain in the ass. They usually take several months to be returned to me, if they’re returned at all. Sometimes they just disappear.

 
Worldwide Sales

Despite these hassles, I’ll keep selling to people everywhere, and looking for more ways to improve the international shipping experience. I’ll keep working on packaging changes to reduce shipping weight and costs, and improved labeling to speed customs inspection time. To the customers in the 42 countries where I’ve done business, thank you.