Shipping to China

How long for USPS international air?

[HRoth]

For the first time I had a purchaser in China (Shanghai). Customers can select International Priority or International Air Mail, and since this was a small order, the customer chose air. I have never shipped anything to China before. I marked the customs form as "merchandise" and "horticultural seeds," which is what they are, with a value of $3.00, about right. I shipped it at the end of March and it still has not arrived. With international air, there's no tracking beyond the US border. I only see it left Chicago on April 1.

I don't have much of a concern about the items being stolen, because they don't have much value and most people would not know what to do with them. They are being shipped to a botanist.

Anyone ship to Shanghai from US before? I looked on an expat forum and they were talking about shipping to Shanghai taking longer than to other cities there. One person quoted 4-5 weeks as normal, whereas to other cities it would take 2 weeks.

I hope to ship more items to China in the future. What is your experience with shipping there USPS?

[Trucker]

I've never shipped Air Mail, but have used Express and Priority to China. Priority has been delivered in about 7 days, and Express is usually about 3 days. I've never had an customs problems or lost packages.

[dpd1]

I don't think I would ever do anything other than priority or express for int. stuff. People say they want to save money, but even if you warn them, the whining starts happening three weeks into it. I've tried to stay away from anything other than Hong Kong, because I have already had issues with products being copied over there. But I have heard it's similar to Russia... The large cities can be OK, but once you go outside that, the failure rate goes up rapidly.

There's that other thing they have from China to here. I'm not sure if it works the other way around. I forget what it's called... something something Post. The Chinese sellers off eBay use it. I've gotten small parts that way in just 1 1/2 week or so.

[not2easy]

Just needed to order from China, it shipped via "ePacket delivery from China"

The USPS is combining services with UPS and FedEx to complete a lot of otherwise painful deliveries. I would check to see what the carriers are suggesting for that, even US big box stores that would never ship to my PO Box are using some hybrid shipping options that haven't been around very long. For small, lightweight shipments, My choice would be the same as Trucker mentioned, even if I needed to profit a little less. Depending on cost to replace, they do offer proof of delivery.

[dpd1]

ePacket... Yeah, I think that's the thing I was thinking of.

[jrockfl]

I have shipped items in the past using express mail international. It took about a week.

I ship items to china 3 to 4 times a month using DHL. DHL is much faster and their tracking is superior.