You better wait a minute (or week) Mr. Postman
July 1, 2022 4:30 AM   Subscribe

I ordered an item from Australia, which was sent Australian Post. I received notice last Sunday that it had arrived in Chicago and since then, it has been languishing in an “International arrival - awaiting clearance” status, according to the Australian Post tracking website. Is this normal? (more inside)

And if I wanted to follow up on this, who would I contact — if this was a US-domestic item, I would pop down to my local post office and ask them to put a trace on it. In this case, knowing that trying to get information by phone from the USPS system is futile and pointless, where do I start?
posted by Silvery Fish to Grab Bag (7 answers total)
 
Best answer: Yes - somewhat normal for now. About a month ago an Australian Post item of mine sat in Chicago for a full 10 days before moving on. Sounds like customs processing times are running longer than normal. You may be able to find the item in your USPS dashboard which will give a little more domestic detail when it clears customs.

Country Mod's Australia Post Tracking. USPS tracking for same package no longer available (that I can find).
posted by countrymod at 5:24 AM on July 1, 2022


Best answer: I suspect that it's got some kind of customs thing that has to be cleared first. This isn't unusual; it's a bit on the longer side of things, but it still sounds more like an "unusually busy week at the customs office" or "new guy isn't quite sure how to process a form yet" kind of delay rather than there being anything actually actively wrong.

I wouldn't worry quite yet. Unless it's really urgent, I'd wait another week and then contact U.S. Customs directly to see what might be the problem. (It could be anything from "we're confused about this form here" to "the agent who was going to work on your package was out sick with food poisoning all last week and we just cleared it today").
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:33 AM on July 1, 2022


Best answer: Forgot to add: if you're getting the runaround from customs, you could also try contacting the person you bought the stuff from and ask THEM to look into things.

But no, a weeks' delay is definitely understandable, what with the supply chain being all janked up and customs agents scrambling to sort everything out. I work near the purchasing office in a tech/manufacturing company and a couple times have heard one of our purchasing guys on the phone with FedEx chewing them out over packages that have been sitting in customs for a MONTH; but that's for entire crates of titanium or rare earth metals, and I doubt you would be waiting THAT long.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:38 AM on July 1, 2022


Best answer: As one more resource, I've found 17track to be a useful site for getting more detailed line items about international shipments. Sometimes it works better with the original country tracking number, sometimes with the "partner shipper" USPS number.
posted by true at 6:23 AM on July 1, 2022


For my last package from China a month ago, the tracking number started working in the USPS website by that point, and USPS had much better tracking than the shipper. And no, I'd never give a thought to there being a real problem if it's been less than 10 or 12 days since your package hit customs.
posted by wotsac at 7:13 AM on July 1, 2022


USPS is suffering from staff shortages and other problems right now, and some of the large international clearance centres are very backlogged. The Jamaica, NY depot had more than a month's backlog fairly recently. There's also a problem with some depots receiving and processing parcels, but not updating the status. So you hear nothing for a couple of weeks, then it's on your doorstep and marked delivered.
posted by scruss at 10:02 AM on July 1, 2022


Response by poster: The Jamaica, NY depot had more than a month's backlog fairly recently.

Crazy. Thanks all for the confirmation that this is the normal state of affairs now.
posted by Silvery Fish at 10:05 AM on July 1, 2022


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