posted by 华金 on March 29, 2013 | 4 comments
I have a question about packages delivered to China from abroad. Some friends have told me there have been items sent to them from abroad by their families that were never delivered. I'm a DJ and I need to buy a lot of vinyl records online, but I'm scared that they might not arrive. Is there a key to making sure that packages get delivered? Are customs more likely to open them and dispose of them if the recipient has a foreign name? It'd be great if anyone could shed some light on this.
Considering that express delivery from companies such as DHL is expensive, and that I would order dozens of records, I'd like to see if it's safe to do normal delivery.
Also, do packages get opened indiscrimately, or is there a way to lessen the likelyhood that they'll be opened by customs. Vinyls are quite large and delicate, and I'm afraid that if they are mishandled they might get ruined since some of them are so rare and expenisive, that would be a major concern to me.
Thanks to anyone who could give me some advice!
華金
LumiPanda爸 on March 29, 2013 | reply
All the packages that people have sent for me from Finland to China (Beijing) have always arrived (using the normal postal service). I do not remember if we have used mine or my wife's name (she is Chinese) as the receiver. Most likely hers.However the packages always look like they have been treated pretty badly. So always ask the sender to keep this in mind when packing the stuff. Last package had a rather large whole in it, but luckily all the Xmas presents were still inside. However I had to re-wrap few of the gifts as the Xmas wrapping was not looking so nice anymore.I would not use normal delivery for anything too valuable. We have successfully received pretty standard stuff; small gifts, toys, books, clothes, canned food, cosmetics etc.
Not good news, but we've seen multiple people get time sensitive packages "caught up" in customs with no way to expedite them save paying some sort of tax. The more valuable the shipment and the more urgently you seem to want it the more likely that this will happen. And some were never delivered at all.Unfortunately, if you use services like FedEx or DHL they don't take responsibility for things that enter the black hole of customs, while it also seems to be a signal to customs that this is a potentially important shipment. Paper documents *do* seem to go through without getting held up though.Anyway, if you have the time to try it out, I'd suggest looking at insuring the shipments but using regular mail. It might take a couple of days longer on first glance, but it's probably also less likely to get flagged as a valuable shipment. And Chinese names are better than foreign names for avoiding this problem too.
Thanks for the replies! Those are some really useful tips. By the way, does anyone know the reason for packages being mysteriously withheld? Is it to do with tax, or is it some sort of deterrent to discourage people from importing goods? Or is it done upon suspicion of bringing illegal products? It just seems so randomly carried out...