I've been living in Italy for more than six years now and never had a problem with receiving packages so it surprised me to learn that many eBay sellers (and Art of Shaving) won't ship to Italy. Then, this summer, three packages seem to have dropped off the face of the earth. Yesterday, after much digging, someone gave me the secret telephone number of a very nice lady who works in Italian customs who explained it all to me.
One major problem is what you put on the customs declaration. If you put "soap" be prepared for the package to be "lost" for years. Soap falls into the category of products that have to be examined by the health authorities. The office that handles this only devotes one day a week to packages in customs, so they take five times as long as normal packages. I have one package that I've been waiting three months for with no end in sight. If you're sending soap to Italy never under any circumstances say "soap" on the customs declaration and, if you can't lie, don't send it unless the receipient is prepared to wait months and months.
That's the bad news. The good news is that Italian customs tracks every package. After I talked to two different call centers, where the agent insisted that I needed to have a tracking number to find a package (which I didn't) the magic lady at the secret number asked me for my first and last name and province and was able to tell me the status of every package that had ever been shipped to me. On second thought, it's a little scary to learn that all that information is kept in a computer somewhere, but I was glad she knew where my packages were. Of course, knowing where they are doesn't make them arrive any faster.
One major problem is what you put on the customs declaration. If you put "soap" be prepared for the package to be "lost" for years. Soap falls into the category of products that have to be examined by the health authorities. The office that handles this only devotes one day a week to packages in customs, so they take five times as long as normal packages. I have one package that I've been waiting three months for with no end in sight. If you're sending soap to Italy never under any circumstances say "soap" on the customs declaration and, if you can't lie, don't send it unless the receipient is prepared to wait months and months.
That's the bad news. The good news is that Italian customs tracks every package. After I talked to two different call centers, where the agent insisted that I needed to have a tracking number to find a package (which I didn't) the magic lady at the secret number asked me for my first and last name and province and was able to tell me the status of every package that had ever been shipped to me. On second thought, it's a little scary to learn that all that information is kept in a computer somewhere, but I was glad she knew where my packages were. Of course, knowing where they are doesn't make them arrive any faster.
