Corona is still affecting postal services around the globe. There are still some service limitations or suspensions in place to several countries all around the world. Here you can find an overview of what’s still causing problems. We will continue to update this thread accordingly.

Status as of Monday, OCTOBER 4th 2021.

First and foremost and while not corona-related: Great Britain has left the EU with the start of 2021. Combined with corona-related safe measures, this initially caused quite some chaos over the first few weeks of the new year. Our first shipments to the UK in 2021 went smoothly, so we’re now back to accepting orders from UK customers.

Europe: postal services for all European destinations are up and running at this moment in time.

Asia: all countries are currently back in service. For some countries the costs of transportation has increased (not your concern though, but ours instead), others are warning of slightly increased transit times (like Japan). In general shipping to all countries in Asia should be fine though.

Australia and Oceania: regular parcels to Australia and New Zealand are currently facing increased transit times due to combined air/sea-freight forwarding. Our post office states plus 3 to 4 extra weeks for small parcels. That matches with our recent shipments, so have some patience.

Americas: some countries in the Caribbean had and continue to have limited services. Brazil is back in service, but small parcels might take a few weeks extra (mainly due to customs handling in the destination country). Canada is open for service, but our post office is warning that a portion of the parcel traffic are currently forwarded by sea instead of air freight. In our experience that’s not the case. Even parcels during the holiday season arrived rather quickly at all Canadian destinations. Chile is one of the few countries that we currently can’t ship to, unless it’s a bigger order (services for small shipments aren’t available and parcel services have severly increased in price).

USA: the United States were a big mess during the early 2021 holiday season. Our post office sent out a warning letter to business customers stating that the USPS is sitting on a back log of more than a quarter million parcels in their New Jersey sorting centers, so the delays might not be over yet. The US currently have reduced postal and customs capacities on the east coast. While our experience with parcels sent to the US over the past few weeks (over the whole summer of 2021) was really good, there’s still a chance for delays. Some more details below.

 

If you’re placing a bigger order, always check in with us for the possibility of express shipping. DHL Express is pretty much able to reach all locations in 3-4 working days and the extra costs might be less than what you’d expect. 

 

More information on the shipping situation for orders from the US:

Our post office basically offers three ways of shipping items registered: tracked priority airmail for small packets (that’s anything up to 2kg/4.4lbs). Economy parcel services (slower shipping for parcels above 2kg) and premium parcel services (for priority airmail service for parcels above 2kg).

Usually all of our prices already include international shipping and this means tracked prirority airmail for small orders and premium parcel service for bigger orders. We used those services for years after years and transit time to the US have always been under two weeks (maybe except for the holidays, but that’s another topic).

Small packet services had been suspended for shipments to the US for almost half a year in 2020 due to corona-related capacity problems. They’re now available again, but our post office is warning that all those small packets might be forwarded to the US by sea freight instead of regular air freight, which can mean an extra four weeks of transit time. We did ship quite a few of those over the past weeks and all them arrived rather quickly, so we’re confident about using this kind of service again, but we guess that slow or delayed transit remains a possibility.

All of our prices still include free small packet shipping. For largers orders we recommend a DHL Express upgrade for roughly 50 EUR (really depends on both the parcel’s weight and the shipping destination). We’re happy to get you a shipping price for expedited service.

 

In the meantime – as usual: please stay safe and healthy!