| Sending parcels home: your experiences | |
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| Oct 21, 2007 20:24 |   |
 | A problem of many travelers; you buy too much souvenirs and other clutter and your backpack gets heavier and heavier. Of course you can choose to send some things back home by mail. What are your experiences with that? I have sent small parcels back to Europe a few times. Due the cost of air mail, I always opt for transportation by boat. It sometimes took up to 8 weeks before the package arrived, but it always did in the end. Still I have heard many stories about mail and parcels getting lost or of extremely high shipping costs. Your stories...? |
| Oct 21, 2007 21:12 | #1 |
| China Post and a slow boat worked for me. The cost was reasonable. The only downside is that it took forever. |
| Oct 22, 2007 00:38 | #2 |
| Hi Dannyn, I've used China Post and the "slow boat that usually takes at least 2 months to get stuff to England" route a couple of times now and it's been fine. (Touch wood). The first time I sent about 15kg of books back.... it cost a few hundred yuan, but that was minimal compared with the air-mail/excess luggage options. Now I am super strict with myself on books :( As an aside. Last week I went to post a hat, and a note written on a piece of paper as a present for my mum. When I got to the post office, the assistant informed me there was "NO WAY" I could post the hat and the little note together in the same package. I asked her if I could just put the note inside the hat.... NO. Sadly I couldn't understand her when she explained to me why not.... China!! :) |
| Oct 22, 2007 00:59 | #3 |
| China post is a bit tricky. They will not let you use any other boxes than the ones they supplied. I tried to re-use a cylinder for paintings once and we had to cover it with white paper so it mimicked CP's packaging. They could not supply their own similar cylinder so they at least let my use mine redecorated I have also used Fedex for important documents and papers. A friend sent quite a lot of souvenirs home using China Air Express simply because China Post wouldn't let her send glass. It was well packed and reasonable and turned up within the week as stated. |
| Nov 16, 2007 21:19 | #4 |
| GUEST88236 | HELP: I was traveling in Yunnan and sent a package back to my temporary apartment in Shanghai. When I returned back from my trip (yesterday), I found out that my package was "returned to sender" - to the Yunnan post office! Who knows where it is now. To make things worse, I am moving back to the US the day after tomorrow. Any ideas how to track this down and get my stuff back? hotmail.com|cinyf |
| Jan 20, 2008 01:23 | #5 |
| GUEST38160 | Does anyone know the approximate shipping cost of a 50kg parcel from beijing to Vancouver. More concerened about price than speed. Thanks Mike |
| Apr 22, 2008 01:49 | #6 |
| GUEST44223 | I'm living in China, and so far my experiences have been good with sending letters home to Europe. It's reliable and they are there fast (10-14 days even from remote location). However, sending parcels is an altogether different story... The problem is the (in my eyes) strange regulations on what they allow in a parcel and what not. And yes, the box needs to be approved of as well – and if it’s not their own make, chances are it gets refused… Here just a few items I was not allowed to mail (or friends couldn’t post to me ). All of them on domestic mail – mail abroad is even more difficult as you can’t post it from any post office you want. In remote locations, you may have to go to the prefectural or provincial main post office. The post refused to mail the following: A jar of chocolate spread, a cell phone battery (they did let my friend post the cell phone, though!) and an assortment of foreign medical articles (sterile syringes, some pills, some ointments). The first two attempts were made in two big cities – Chengdu and Kunming (where one would expect less red tape…) - and the latter in a remote rural place where success with mail anyway depends on the favour with the post office attendant. I had none that day, and she sent me half way through town to the “medicine inspection office” to get written permission. However, this place turned me flatly down, saying I need an official receipt or an import declaration. |
| Apr 22, 2008 03:47 | #7 |
| I was not allowed to use newspaper as packing. The cost of a small package was 80rmb inChengdu, but a few months later 150 rmb for a smaller package. But the basic service gets these to Australia in around two weeks. The package is barcoded - no let me rephrase that, they attach a barcode to the parcel and they enter something into a computer :) I would say this must be by air, sea would not deliver in 2 weeks. |
| Apr 22, 2008 22:30 | #8 |
| I tried to send some CD's containing photos through China Post, and EMS, but was refused. They told me I had to go to the police station and get the CD's "approved". So that is exactly what I did, but when I told the police to approve them, they looked at me as though I had just landed from Mars. They had no idea what they were supposed to do, and it seems that (like many other things in China) you just get passed off from one official body to the next, with none of them cooperating with each other. The fact that China Post accept only things in their own packaging is a joke. I did some investigation into this a couple of years ago (as it was causing a major obstacle to a business plan I had), and the official answer from someone of authority was that unless letters, postcards, or parcels are in China Post approved packaging, then they won't be able to pass through their automated system. This of course is total rubbish, as things sent from abroad (obviously not in China Post approved packaging) manage to pass through the system with no problems at all. |
| Oct 9, 2009 02:22 | #9 |
| GUEST46930 | Does any one know if i can post Weapon from China to England? Sword and spear. thank you :-) |
| Nov 3, 2009 19:43 | #10 |
| GUEST27585 | One collegue of my husband posted a sword last year, from China to Canada, but it was a Taï-Chi sword, not real one, that can cut or hurt. You should check what is accepted by english post. |
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