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International Package Ukraine

On December 6, 2020 I purchased a Ushanka from an Etsy seller in Ukraine. The hat is supposedly handmade and even though it was more money and very far away, I felt better about buying it than a surplus army one. The seller shipped the hat the next day and I have zero complaints with him and his attentive communication.

After a month it landed at the ISC facility in NYC which is an hour away from my home. Thinking it will arrive to me by the weeks end, I see now it is on the way to a Chicago distribution center. Once they finish the process there it will ship back to New Jersey using most likely the same route it took to get there.

Perhaps by April my winter hat will arrive.

Does anyone know why the package would need to go to Chicago without being sorted first in NYC. and why can't postal be as efficient as Amazon or UPS.
 
I have just learned that it may not be a USPS problem.

Some merchandise was ordered online without realizing it was being shipped from Lithuania. It arrived in the Chicago ISC facility and has been sitting there since 12/27. The tracking info just stopped. I contacted the USPS but later learned that the delay is caused by customs. They are sitting on the merchandise for some reason. Someone saw an earlier post I made on this subject and told me his experience. He ordered a bicycle part which shipped from China. It sat in the San Francisco ISC for three months. He filed a claim with Customs and was told it was under investigation because the part looked like it might be a "dangerous weapon."
 

Commander Quan

Commander Yellow Pantyhose
I had a package from ali express sit in ISC for 2 months before it moved through the postal system.

I order a different item from a vendor in East Central PA that over 3 weeks went to Florida, Chicago, Atlanta, and Florida again before finally being delivered in Eastern Ohio.
 
To me it is the route of the package. It entered the U.S. system in NYC for a New Jersey delivery...they then forwarded it out to Chicago. Now back to the east coast.

Amazing how much fentyal and drugs get into the country yet a bicycle part is held up.

I have been told that the U.S. Postal system MUST take any and all packages it receives from foreign countries. That is why we can order something on Aliexpress for less than 3 dollars with free shipping to America. The Chinese seller pays nothing to ship it as long as he can get it into China Post.
 
18ish years ago I ordered a heavily modified/upgraded camera from Ukraine. If it matters it is a hartblei modified Kiev 88. I paid, waited. the intermediary contacted me and said the company just closed its doors. a few weeks later he contacted me and said he found the lead tech and the guy agreed to complete my camera. Few weeks later I got an email that said bad news. That was all it said. A year later my camera shows up looking like it was packed and shipped from the 1800s: paper wrapped with no tape, tied with stiff natural twine, stuffed with newspaper and straw. Yes straw. The ship date was a month after I got the last communication. The package was stamped with huge amounts of customs stamps. I figure it was in the hands of customs for at least 9 months. All of my Soviet era lenses were held up in customs for quite some time too. I think customs just hate Ukraine.
 

Legion

Staff member
I'm guessing covid. Because of the time of year, combined with social distancing requirements, budget cuts to your postal system, and various other factors, international mail is likely being sent around the country for customs clearance, to distribute the workload.
 
Perhaps, it was in Chicago for less than 12 hours and is now in Aurora Ill. It makes us wonder why and how a system in place so long as USPS can operate like that meanwhile Amazon and others would never.
 
18ish years ago I ordered a heavily modified/upgraded camera from Ukraine. If it matters it is a hartblei modified Kiev 88. I paid, waited. the intermediary contacted me and said the company just closed its doors. a few weeks later he contacted me and said he found the lead tech and the guy agreed to complete my camera. Few weeks later I got an email that said bad news. That was all it said. A year later my camera shows up looking like it was packed and shipped from the 1800s: paper wrapped with no tape, tied with stiff natural twine, stuffed with newspaper and straw. Yes straw. The ship date was a month after I got the last communication. The package was stamped with huge amounts of customs stamps. I figure it was in the hands of customs for at least 9 months. All of my Soviet era lenses were held up in customs for quite some time too. I think customs just hate Ukraine.

People in other countries pack things with whatever they have. I received packages from Pakistan packed with scrap clothes. Boxes too are hard for them to find in other lands.
 
Well it arrived from Chicago in 12 hours back to the east coast. Great purchase and real happy with it.
 

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On December 6, 2020 I purchased a Ushanka from an Etsy seller in Ukraine. The hat is supposedly handmade and even though it was more money and very far away, I felt better about buying it than a surplus army one. The seller shipped the hat the next day and I have zero complaints with him and his attentive communication.

After a month it landed at the ISC facility in NYC which is an hour away from my home. Thinking it will arrive to me by the weeks end, I see now it is on the way to a Chicago distribution center. Once they finish the process there it will ship back to New Jersey using most likely the same route it took to get there.

Perhaps by April my winter hat will arrive.

Does anyone know why the package would need to go to Chicago without being sorted first in NYC. and why can't postal be as efficient as Amazon or UPS.
I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
 
Does anyone know why the package would need to go to Chicago without being sorted first in NYC. and why can't postal be as efficient as Amazon or UPS.
Partly Covid, partly the particularly insane volume of holiday shipping and returns. Because of the volume, apparently stuff was being put on trucks going anywhere just to keep it from stacking up in post offices.

I had a similar experience with an item I bought on eBay last month taking twelve days to get to me. But it didn't come from Ukraine, it was from a seller that was a four hour drive from me. That's very much the exception though. Usually they are as efficient as Amazon or UPS.
 
People in other countries pack things with whatever they have. I received packages from Pakistan packed with scrap clothes. Boxes too are hard for them to find in other lands.

I wasn’t complaining. The post office ladies and I thought it was cool. In fact they requested that I unpack the camera and the lenses I ordered from there at the counter so they could see how it was packed and collect the cool parts. They were hung in the PO wall for quite a while.
 

EclipseRedRing

I smell like a Christmas pudding
I am just relieved to see the country referred to as 'Ukraine' and not the anachronistic 'THE Ukraine' which I hear often, even on the BBC News. Standards are in decline, and the BBC standards were pretty low to begin with.
 
The Grand Canyon...The Mountains...The Chicago.

I've never heard of an independent nation being refered to as such myself and try to avoid it even though as you correctly state we hear it all the time. Ukraine was once a region of the USSR which is where it originates from I guess.
 
I'm in NJ. Last March, razor blades I ordered from Germany took over a month to get, due to "delays in customs". Things have probably gotten worse since then, but everyone blames delays on Covid. Some packages, and Christmas cards with checks, that my wife mailed to family and grandkids in mid-December (all within the US) only got there this week. A movie I ordered from ebay in early Dec., went from a town in TX to another TX city, to So Carolina (???), then back to the original TX city. It then had no updates for over a week, until it was listed out for delivery. I eventually got it.

My life being a mix of Sad Sack and Joe Btfsplk, I'm a glutton for punishment. Late last last month I took a chance and ordered an $85 silent film from Amazon France. Delivery is supposed to be next week, but I'm not holding my breath. I have no way to track and I don't speak French, so this should be fun.

At my last NJ address, my post office used to toss overseas CD/DVD orders in a return bin. Thankfully, I had a GREAT mailman for most of that time. Even he couldn't figure out why. If I had an overseas order coming from Amazon UK or IT, like a Brubeck CD or silent DVD, he would keep an eye out for it. He was so good at his job, he always got a c-note at Christmas. When he was reassigned, I had my foreign orders forwarded to my daughter's address. His idiot replacement, who mixed up mail from different streets, got zilch.
 
I have just learned that it may not be a USPS problem.

Some merchandise was ordered online without realizing it was being shipped from Lithuania. It arrived in the Chicago ISC facility and has been sitting there since 12/27. The tracking info just stopped. I contacted the USPS but later learned that the delay is caused by customs. They are sitting on the merchandise for some reason. Someone saw an earlier post I made on this subject and told me his experience. He ordered a bicycle part which shipped from China. It sat in the San Francisco ISC for three months. He filed a claim with Customs and was told it was under investigation because the part looked like it might be a "dangerous weapon."

My package was finally delivered today. It sat in Chicago for 17 days.
 
All favorites I've seen.
30’s - King Kong, Wizard of OZ, Duck Soup, Bride of Frankenstein, Stagecoach, All Quiet on the Western Front, Frankenstein, Dracula

40’s - Cat People, Detour, DOA, Red River, The Keys of the Kingdom, The Best Years of Our Lives, Abbot and Costello Meet Franenstein
50’s - Shane, Les Diaboliques, Godzilla, From Here to Eternity, The Robe, Quo Vadis, Ben-Hur, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Searchers, Heaven Knows Mr Allison, Invaders from Mars
60’s - The Greatest Story Ever Told, 2001: A space Odyssey, A Hard Day’s Night, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, Goldfinger, From Russia With Love, Psycho, Bonnie and Clyde, Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, The Longest Day, Point Blank, Once Upon a Time in the West.
70’s - Godfather, Saturday Night Fever, Jaws, Apocalypse Now, Patton, Das Boot, The Exorcist, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Blazing Saddles, Mash, Annie Hall, 200 Motels, American Graffiti, Diary of a Mad Housewife, Young Frankenstein, The French Connection (I & II), Star Wars, Rocky, Chinatown, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Deerhunter, Performance, All the President’s Men, Nosferatu the Vampire. Agguire the Wrath of God, The Man who fell to Earth, Superman, Let it Be, Supperfly
80’s & 90S’s - Opera, Saving Private Ryan, The Fisher King, The Big Red One, Battle Beyond the Stars, Romeo is Bleeding, Scarface, The Shinning, The Shawshank Redemption, Full Metal Jacket, Batman, Superman II, Unforgiven, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Dark City, The Fugitive
2000’s and beyond - Stan and Ollie, Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Vision, Annihilation, Hereditary, Ex Machina, Moulin Rouge, Joker, The Dark knight Rises, Drag me to Hell, Melancholia, Sing Street, 300, The New World, Te Assassination of Jesse James by thr Coward Robert Ford, Silence, Casino Royale, Parasite
 
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