ottotheboar

I was told this morning when I ordered some spare parts from the UK that the Royal Mail could take up to a month to arrive , this was from a chap who ships to the USA often not just a one off, I opted for UPS. I know this topic was mentioned regarding packages around Christmas it looks like things are the same. The package was under 2kg.

Brat1

Yeah, don't think its much better than at Christmas, my dad uses DHL to send me parcels, and they're here from the UK within 24 hours without fail. Funny thing though, I sent a parcel from here to the UK last week and it arrived in Glasgow within 4 days, normal postage - weird, doesn't make sense to me

lansbury

Sounds right. Just had a DVD from Amazon UK take 3 weeks to get here.

Wintersong

My Mum posted 2 small parcels to my girls for Valentines Day and they took a month to arrive

Post going the other way is always much faster for some reason. Don't know whether the RM lets their packages sit in warehouses for weeks before putting them on planes or whether the USPS does it with incoming stuff, but someone's definitely doing it

Twigstar

I received 2 Christmas cards from different parts of the UK the last week of February. My parents posted our Christmas parcel November 23rd and we received it January 12th.

Lothianlad

Royal Mail is very busy at the present time delivering all these multi page UK Census 2011 forms to every single household in the United Kingdom, to be legally enforceably completed by all said householders as of 27 March 2011 - Census Day.

On top of that many of the postal delivery personnel (the word "postmen" - and 99% of them are male after all - is now banned in PC Britain) are not native Brits - many of them are Eastern Europeans not too well versed in the English language and may well be thrown off course by the postal name places and addresses.

But the gorgeous and very attractive Polish lass - Elena - serving on the deli counter of our local Tesco store speaks perfect English, which is more than can be said of many of her local born colleagues. She's delightful and so helpful and her accent is quite hypnotic - almost, but not quite, enough to turn me straight..........

Mummy in the foothills

Yeah they are terrible right now, Usually a parcel takes a week Mine took three just last month.
Christmas I can excuse they had horrible weather. But now they are still really slow.

anne55

I had presumed it was on the US side that the delays were happening? OH uses a vendor in the UK every couple of months for his Tips and papers to roll his own nasty stuff the vendor led us to believe it was US customs where the hold up is we just allow extra time now as the shipping is taking 3 weeks versus a week that it used to take.

Bob

Someone posted about this a few weeks ago, it's to do with homeland security having stuff larger than a dvd being put on a ship instead of flying over.

It's taken a good 6 weeks, but packages for our little one from my mother has arrived. One of the newborn outfits is too small and all the premie stuff is doll clothing now

sir_eccles

Just read this:

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/c...800088#1600085

taffie77

Yep, that was me here. However, following sir_eccles link to the update on RM, today we received 2 packages that my FIL posted from Bristol just 4 days ago

Michael

I doubt it is US customs since UPS, DHL, and FedEx should also be slow. I suspect that since Royal Mail doesn't have it's own fleet of airplanes to the US, they may be having a difficult time finding cargo space on the airlines.

randomgirl

Yep... it's very slow! My mum sent our Christmas card on December 13th and it arrived 7 weeks later It wasn't even a parcel, just a card!!!

Also, we had a parcel go missing which was a real bummer as it contained a handmade silk shawl my friend made me for my wedding... That's another reason we assumed my mum's card wasn't coming, we figured it'd probably been stolen.

However, I've sent a few cards to the UK recently and when I've posted them on a Saturday they've arrived the following Wednesday - pretty damn good!

CAdreaming

Hmm I've just had my UK mail redirected to the USA.......not a good move I guess...

mellybrown

My mum sent sent me a parcel of cadburys chocolates on feb 10th that just turned up 2 days ago - I was getting worried that the postie was munching on them somewhere!!!