U.S. to Finland mailing times (in your experience)?

August 29, 2014 3:56 AM

Have you sent mail to Finland from the U.S. with Priority Mail International? Has that ever taken longer than 10 business days? (No customs value involved, in my case - just a standard flat envelope of papers with no value.)

I'll be mailing an envelope of papers from Philadelphia to a city that's 100km (60 miles) north of Helsinki.

I hope to use Priority Mail International, which the USPS claims (but doesn't guarantee) has a delivery time of "6 to 10 business days" to "major markets."

I need some time to finish the papers, so what I'm looking to figure out is the latest safe date when I can mail in order to have the envelope arrive on or before Tuesday the 30th of September.

(There's also a "3 to 5 business days" Express service that's much more expensive -- I may end up using that if I want more time, but I hope I can just use Priority.)

posted by kalapierson to Grab Bag (6 answers total)

Typically it arrives in only a few days but it is far from an exact science. If it is a time sensitive item I would recommend using the more expensive option or mailing the item out well in advance to your due date.

My experience is with Helsinki, but once the mail arrives in Finland the local mail delivery system is quite efficient.
posted by wile e at 5:34 AM on August 29, 2014

I'm in Athens, Greece and regularly get paper mail from New York in 5-7 days: I think you can take their 6-10 days at face value, maybe pad it by a couple of days if missing the deadline would be catastrophic.
posted by Dr Dracator at 6:43 AM on August 29, 2014

I just sent a Priority Mail flat envelope like yours from San Francisco to the Netherlands, and it arrived in five days including a weekend. Maybe that was just lucky, but it's another data point.
posted by vickyverky at 9:46 AM on August 29, 2014

on Postcrossing I've sent three postcards to Finland [various cities], and they arrived in 6, 10, and 5 days.
posted by the twistinside at 10:40 AM on August 29, 2014

I've had Priority envelopes take about a week to get to Finland.
posted by ktkt at 8:41 PM on August 29, 2014

Response by poster: Thank you everybody!
posted by kalapierson at 5:59 PM on September 2, 2014