Current shipping status (Ebay, Giantoy, KGHobby, etc)

Stuff I'm getting from Monkey Depot now seems to only take about four weeks instead of more than eight. Let's hope this trend keeps up!

Had an item ship from OSK and arrived last week. Shipped Aug 31, arrived on the 5th! However, it was a different item than one i mentioned earlier. That one still hasn't arrived yet and was shipped earlier.

I also had an ebay item arrive today, Shipped probably aug 31 as well. arrived today the 14th. Unfortunately they gave me 2 right boots instead of one right and one left.

That’s a bummer.

So my TBL Viking Woman base body finally cleared UK customs four days ago (thankfully without a charge this time), but has since been bouncing around the country from one distribution depot to another 'in error', with a following 'Sorry - we have rerouted it immediately and will keep you informed of its progress through the system'.

and  and also

I can feel an irate phone conversation coming on.

GeeWillikers wrote:So my TBL Viking Woman base body finally cleared UK customs four days ago (thankfully without a charge this time), but has since been bouncing around the country from one distribution depot to another 'in error', with a following 'Sorry - we have rerouted it immediately and will keep you informed of its progress through the system'.

and  and also

I can feel an irate phone conversation coming on.

It is amazing how items can leave their originating countries in a day or two, arrive in the UK a day or two after that then sit in customs for a week, bounce around depots for a couple days then sit at the delivery depot waiting for a weekend to finish before then mysteriously failing to be delivered as one was not home despite actually staying home the entire day waiting......... so then it must be collected and once one does finally receive it the box looks like it had been through a war and something inside is rattling.....
Yeah, sometimes UK postal service sucks

To be fair, most of my recent experiences have actually been ok but I have had some really crappy experiences with Royal Snail, DHelL, Spermese and Parcel Farce.

csyeung wrote:Had an item ship from OSK and arrived last week. Shipped Aug 31, arrived on the 5th! However, it was a different item than one i mentioned earlier. That one still hasn't arrived yet and was shipped earlier.

I also had an ebay item arrive today, Shipped probably aug 31 as well. arrived today the 14th. Unfortunately they gave me 2 right boots instead of one right and one left.

A fella on FB (one sixth republic page) said he received one with two left boots. I smell a trade

jaztermareal wrote:[
A fella on FB (one sixth republic page) said he received one with two left boots. I smell a trade

Thanks for looking out, I just checked and it sucks that it seems to happen a lot. I remember seeing some guy with a Miles morales with two left feet too out of the box. Unfortunately, his are male boots and mine are female boots from the Russian airborne Natalia. Seller refunded me, but the boots are useless as two rights. I think I'll put some posts up to fish if anyone ever got two lefts in the past.

csyeung wrote:

jaztermareal wrote:[
A fella on FB (one sixth republic page) said he received one with two left boots. I smell a trade

Thanks for looking out, I just checked and it sucks that it seems to happen a lot. I remember seeing some guy with a Miles morales with two left feet too out of the box. Unfortunately, his are male boots and mine are female boots from the Russian airborne Natalia. Seller refunded me, but the boots are useless as two rights. I think I'll put some posts up to fish if anyone ever got two lefts in the past.

hope you can find that someone, I am sure there is someone out there with two left boots

csyeung wrote:

jaztermareal wrote:[
A fella on FB (one sixth republic page) said he received one with two left boots. I smell a trade

Thanks for looking out, I just checked and it sucks that it seems to happen a lot. I remember seeing some guy with a Miles morales with two left feet too out of the box. Unfortunately, his are male boots and mine are female boots from the Russian airborne Natalia. Seller refunded me, but the boots are useless as two rights. I think I'll put some posts up to fish if anyone ever got two lefts in the past.

Oh! You are looking for DamToys Natalia boots? PM me, I might be able to help!

TBL Viking Woman base body UPDATE:

Seems I was overly-optimistic about it having gotten through customs unscathed, as according to the tracking info on eBay, Royal Mail are now 'holding the item for me as there is a customs fee to pay'.  Nothing from Royal Mail themselves about this yet, of course - that'll probably take another week.  

After a bit of research on this I think I've figured out that 'Sorry - your item has been sent to (insert random RDC) in error and we are re-routing it immediately' is Royal Mail code that actually means 'Customs want to have a look at this - get your wallet out.'

So now I have to wait for The Grey Card Of Financial Ruin to show up so that I can pay the ****ing thing and finally get this object.

           

Large items strictly from GianToy for me from now on, I think.

"Great news for the UK"  



             

Meh, 'civilization' will have collapsed by Christmas anyway.

Ughhhhh... 'this deal keeps getting worse all the time...'

oh dear.... knew the tories wouldn't scrap it. They would tax the air if they could... still, they will give themselves a £3,000 pay rise again

So they will boost the newly independent Britain's economy by encouraging people to NOT buy or sell anything out of country. That is just dumb. Guess there are members of the VAT collection services who wanted to make sure they could keep their corrupt practices well-funded.

Nekk-ra wrote:So they will boost the newly independent Britain's economy by encouraging people to NOT buy or sell anything out of country. That is just dumb. Guess there are members of the VAT collection services who wanted to make sure they could keep their corrupt practices well-funded.

Right??? I am relying on online selling a lot lately, and most of my customers are NOT in the UK. Most people in the UK don't have the funds to splurge on stuff these days. I've been selling mostly to the Continent and occassionally to the US. I recently sent a parcel to an EU country, and in the past I would have been able to post it for only £8 or less -- now, the shipping was well over £20. It's just really depressing because if I can't easily do business outside the UK then what is the point...

after a hard recession caused by pandemic what UK REALLY needs is LESS tax, get everyone spending and ensure that prices are lower so those on low incomes can actually afford to live. Tories (well, Labour too. And Lib Dems. Basically all establishment parties) thrive on taxes and will never lower them. Urgh.

skywalkersaga wrote:

Nekk-ra wrote:So they will boost the newly independent Britain's economy by encouraging people to NOT buy or sell anything out of country. That is just dumb. Guess there are members of the VAT collection services who wanted to make sure they could keep their corrupt practices well-funded.

Right??? I am relying on online selling a lot lately, and most of my customers are NOT in the UK. Most people in the UK don't have the funds to splurge on stuff these days. I've been selling mostly to the Continent and occassionally to the US. I recently sent a parcel to an EU country, and in the past I would have been able to post it for only £8 or less -- now, the shipping was well over £20. It's just really depressing because if I can't easily do business outside the UK then what is the point...

Same. Most of my sales go to US and some to Europe. hardly any in UK. What is the point of even trying now?

In much happier news, I just got a TBL base body from GianToy (via their arrangement with Royal Mail) in FOUR DAYS!

I'm going to enjoy this feeling while it lasts.

WARNING: MANY CENSORING ASTERIXES AHEAD

(This is really just some Sunday ranting, so unless you're entertained by charting the dangerous rise in a middle-aged man's blood pressure, this won't be that interesting)


I do not know what is going on at UK Customs (no real change there, I doubt UK Customs have any ****ing clue either), but I've got half a dozen packets purchased from China (throughout October/November which arrived in the UK before December 1st) which are all now stuck in Customs limbo for 'assessment'.  

It's always a risk so not a huge surprise you might imagine, but none of these things are reaching me or moving along at all and all of these items are just small kitbashing materials. Every single packet is worth under £10 (until Our Glorious 'Liberating' Brexit kicks in on January 1st, imported goods under £15 are still exempt from taxes), but if each one gets VAT slapped on it, that more than doubles the cost of every single item, potentially costing me a ****ing fortune. No matter that as I can prove their true cost and purchase date I might eventually be able to reclaim it.

UK Customs - rather than taking a more laissez-faire attitude to checking imports as getting Covid vaccine into the country should take precedence - seem to be pulling in everything for 'assessment' instead, with the consequence that parcels must be piling up unseen in a warehouse at HMRC HQ. I guess I shouldn't be surprised seeing as getting Covid vaccine distributed so quickly is entirely about appearances of competence on the world stage, and the Brexit cluster**** is purely an exercise in slapping a lick of paint on Britannia's crumbling edifice until the tories' asset-stripper chums have burrowed in underneath and picked her bones clean.

The cynic in me might wildly imagine that UK Customs is under instruction to stockpile all these imported goods until after Jan 1st to try and chisel as many pennies as they can out of the likes of me.  


The real ****** though is the Monkey Depot package I'm waiting on from the US. This is over the £15 threshold admittedly, but it's a head sculpt so I bit the bullet and paid the extra to Fed-Ex it safely and quickly. Took an incredible half a day to travel through the U.S. and reach the UK, which made it well worth the extra outlay. Or so I thought. It has now been sat gathering dust with UK Customs since November 30 and shows no sign of moving forward (like the other half-dozen packages of mine currently in their clutches) totally negating any advantage I might have gained from using Fed-Ex.

And last but not least it turns out I didn't read the Fed-Ex small print first, and they are going to gouge me on 'Clearance Administration Fees' even worse than Royal ****ing Mail would, which I'd imagined would be impossible.          

I know, I know - Covid, 'Extraordinary Times', First World Problem, etc.

Merry Christmas To Me  

You paint a grim picture, GeeW. And I don't doubt any of it one bit. :/

I recently received 4 medium to large parcels from china during november and all arrived just fine but a 5th never even left China, it got rejected for export and returned to sender. Funny thing is that 5th parcel contains only official licensed items so should have been fine. no idea what happened with it. Hopefully it is being re-sent soon and will arrive.

Stuff I ordered from Giantoy takes about three weeks to get to me. Meanwhile, items I ordered from Monkey Depot on October 8th and 16th respectively have yet to arrive. I cannot understand this. Okay...i figured because of the US election, priority would be given to mail-in ballots, and I get it that a lot of people are ordering online for XMAS etc, but it's two months now and this is ridiculous.

Well! Overnight, there was finally some progress with the Monkey Depot package I mentioned above. Customs have released it to FedEx at last so fingers crossed I'll finally get it today. No mention of any charges either so far, but I won't put the padlock back on my wallet just yet.

The clear moral of this story is that I should complain more often.


IN FURTHER NEWS:

Got the above at last. No extra charges.

It also seems like one of the other items they were 'assessing' has now been released.

Giantoys was around 5-10 days in summer to arrive, now it is more like 14-21 days atm. But its still okay with me. Ebay from china is about the same for me.

Only positive thing was a 1/6 jacket I ordered from hongkong and it arrives in just 4 days or sth. I was very surprised when I opened the little parcel. The mysteries of teleportation

Just got an order from Monkey Depot today that I made on October 6.

Got most of my purchases within 2 weeks or so recently (most from HK) and one from Toyanxiety, but I read recently that there was a small spike in Covid cases in hong kong in the last week so that may affect shipping again especially with the christmas rush.

While also taking Pandemic Chaos into consideration, I'm carefully testing the waters with some packages from China and the US in these 'exciting' immediate post-Brexit times (even though the true reality concerning the effect on all international shipping to the UK isn't set to properly kick in until July now). Thanks again to the pandemic, the UK postal system is currently in turmoil anyway with many employees off sick and their colleagues working flat-out to cover for them, and even internal UK mail is taking a long time to circulate. So there's also that to consider.

So I'm currently awaiting three packages, all reasonably inexpensive headsculpts just in case:

One h/s from GianToy purchased on January 4th, that appears to be proceeding normally through their 'fast-tracking' agreement with Royal Mail, which means it should hopefully reach me in a day or two.

One h/s through Ebay purchased on December 3rd, which didn't even get on a flight out of Hong Kong until December 30th, and (according to tracking ) still appears to be in mid-air somewhere.

One from Monkey Depot purchased on January 6th, Fed-Exed and due today (the 11th). Normally this works out just fine - Fed-Exed items from MD are usually at my door in an incredibly quick 2-4 days (including weekends), but this time? Well Fed-Ex's delivery timeframe estimates it should be here before noon today, but tracking indicates that they haven't even received the package yet, let alone sent it on it's way.


Yeah, I know - trivial concerns, considering etc.

*I received the YMToys Freddy cosplay set from Giantoy and the Lucifer Dark elf body with armor from Monkey Depot this weekend.
*just received Hot Toys Endgame Nebula today from Sideshow.
*Super Duck Mantis finally released two weeks ago in Asia. Have a pre-order with Cotswold Collectibles that I expect an invoice for soon.
*Hot Toys GotG2 Gamora will be arriving at Sideshow end of February.
Yes, 2021 will have a Guardians vibe for the first quarter. And Tbleague Horus also has released in Asia, so my pre-order at BBTS should show up around March as well.

I just received a Sideshow order as normal, no delay. However parcels from China are a different story. The one that was returned to sender had some button cell batteries in preventing it from being exported, so they were removed and it was re-sent and arrived in not too long a time frame however another parcel from China dispatched on the 20th December has been stuck in the "waiting for airline space" limbo up to now. Hopefully it actually arrives soon