Issues with lost shipments from the UK?

[biomieg]

After years of buying books from the US and UK and not losing one single package, I seem to be having a streak of very bad luck with books from the UK recently. Over the past six months everything that was sent to me from the UK (by private sellers) got lost. That would be three different shipments from three different sellers.

Did anyone else experience the same lately?

[herbertwest]

A problem with your local post office / post man maybe? Or each of them were supposed to be delivered by their own delivery guy?
I've had many issues with my local postman. Including yesterday, something bought by my gf from the UK : it arrived "opened". Nothing really valuable as such, but personal value.

Since then, if possible, especially the collectibles, i get everything delivered to work. To the point that my colleagues keeps taking the piss out of me.
Today I got 3 packages delivered here

[mikeC]

How much piss have they taken from you?

[Rachel Readman]

Sorry to hear that Michaël.

I've sent about 12-15 shipments in the last month to the USA from the UK and have not had any damages or losses, these were all sent through UPS on Express services though.

[Merlin1958]

Could this be an issue?

Spoiler:

[Rachel Readman]

That would do it Bill LOL

[Lurker]

I ordered the slipcased Game of Thrones from a seller on Amazon.UK, got an e-mail on June 27th saying it had been dispatched and never got it it. Amazon refunded without question in August. Still hoping maybe someday...

[Br!an]

I ordered The Cuckoo's Calling from Speedy Hen in July. They claimed they shipped it. It didn't arrive. They sent another one in August. It never arrived. I finally received a refund.

[biomieg]

Two of my three shipments were eBay purchases and I got refunds for those. But the most expensive one was a private transaction with a collector friend from the UK with whom I've dealt a couple of times before. I haven't been able to contact him since a couple of months and I'm afraid the chance of me getting my money back is pretty small... I was still talking to him when the PayPal 'deadline for refunds' expired. I was still confident everything would turn out okay at the time

[olverts]

I don´t know what happened to him Michael , been trying to Contact him for the past two months but no reply .

In my oppinion he´s a very honest guy and i don´t Think he´s fooling you on purpose , i´m afraid something´s happened to him .
I had a few items on it´s way that he really was looking forward to buy , but suddenly he stopped reply .

But to your question : I have never lost a single item from neither the UK nor US , one or two have taken almost two months to arrive though .

[biomieg]

Yes, I trust him too. He's one of the good guys as far as I'm concerned. I was still in contact with him about six weeks after the books were shipped and we were both wondering what happened with them. But I can't reach him anymore (not the first time this has happened) and I really want to work this out. I guess I'll have to be patient...

Anyway, the main topic of this thread is not that I'm worried about our UK collector friend. I just thought it was extremely weird that all of a sudden every shipment from the UK to me seems to end up missing.

UK friends - what type of mail service should I ask for next time I purchase something from a UK-based seller? Which service has the best tracking options?

[Mr. Rabbit Trick]

UK friends - what type of mail service should I ask for next time I purchase something from a UK-based seller? Which service has the best tracking options?

Any Royal Mail Oversees service is suitable and trackable.

The big problem I've found when sending books abroad is that we (UK) don't have to fill in a Customs Form for books. We just write "Printed Papers" on the package. We also don't have to supply a return address, or cost of the item. This really bugs the Customs Service in the delivery country because they don't know what its worth, and they can get stroppy and hold onto the package for as long as they like.

[George at C-Springs]

Posted somewhere in another thread awhile back; I went 10 years or so without losing a thing, and then late last year/early this year I had 2 or 3 UK shipments just not show up. I think it was 2 from eBay and one from Book Depository or something, I don't remember. I also thought it very odd that it was only from the UK, and all in a relatively short period of time.