Has anyone in Dubai had (worse than usual) issues receiving mail sent from the UK using Royal Mail recently? I’m waiting on couple of small packages and a couple of letters, which I know were sent at different times in the 4 and 8 weeks ago. They’ve all been posted to my usual work PO Box address but no sign.

Could the packages be getting held up at customs, and is there anywhere you can check if things are being held?

Thanks in advance.

postal service here have been shite for 30 years and i suspect it'll still be shite 30 years from now.

shop and ship or other couriers are the only way to get mail with any form of reliability.

agreed, we gave up using Royal Mail when getting stuff from UK years ago. You can actually go to the main post office in karama and search for it. Not a lot of help really.

Unless it was sent registered/recorded post not much chance of finding it. The Post Office will be on a ramadan go slow now too.

I generally find post from the UK to here is fine, apart from in February this year when several birthday card/gifts went missing.

If it's important use Shop and Ship.

Likewise I've never had problems before, other than the length of time things taking to get here being unpredictable, and generally slow. Apparently if your sending from the UK via Royal Mail to a PO Box address here than registered/recorded post cannot be used.

It just seems strange that several things posted independently have all apparently gone astray… A small part of me is still expecting them all to turn up together, a larger part thinks the earliest posted at least have been nicked or lost.

I also feel it has got worse recently!

Took over 8 weeks to send my brother a letter out there. I was almost better off cycling down and giving it to him myself.

I have been waiting for 4 years for a gift sent from UK

Longest I've waited here was 4 months for a parcel that was stamped arrived in the UAE 4 months before I collected it! On the plus side it only took about 2 days to get here from the uk and 4 months to leave karama post office

Way too random for me so shop and ship for everything

How’s your Shop and Ship account set up? Do you have a UK/US address that you send things to which are then sent out here, or do you have a Dubai address that everything is sent directly to?

Do you generally have to pay import tax if buying things from overseas and the shipping here?

check out the website.
you have a uk and us account and stuff is delivered to the house. never paid tax i think they either ignore it or its built into the fees.

That seems to be the case. These days you also get a dropbox addresses in China and Turkey although I've yet to use either of them.

red_sheep - you get charged by weight on the items, so you need to watch that as it can get expensive. Great for important documents though.

even with the weight you can save a fortune of local price gouging. Depends on the items.

have yet to use the china address and will almost certainly never use the turkish one

True. A friend used my S&S account to buy a particular tent from the US and still got it for half what it was on sale for here.

I use mine a lot it was you who got me onto it in the first place, we use it at HOC too when we run out of make-up. Mashaweer are proving to be well handy as well