ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
I just received several items I ordered shipped from the UK to the US, no problem. Gavin is in the middle of moving house, so that probably isn't helping. Everyone is struggling with staffing and operations right now with COVID. I would not hesitate to order from him, just add some patience.
-Gregg
OlivierC:Do any of you know what it is happening?
Is this actually a serious question? https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus
Some people are genuinely shocking me recently. They must live in a parallel universe to us. For example, it's taking us up to 21 days to get orders to people. We state during the order process it can take up to 21 days. No-one is in the office, postage is slower.
What happens? We get email complaints about order delays. Seriously: one guy emailing yesterday morning complaining the order he placed Friday hadn't arrived by Tuesday. He'd waited 2 working days.
People are acting if everything outside their home is 'working as normal'. Utterly perplexing.
moxxey:Some people are genuinely shocking me recently. They must live in a parallel universe to us.
Exactly what I have been thinking for the last two months or so. We closed the shop from regular customer visits mid-March (not government mandated, just our own idea to help staying alive) and it took weeks before most people had any idea why this might be.
Not to mention freight capacity and speed. The big courier companies may have their own freight planes, but most of regular air freight is transported in passenger air liners. What do you know, there aren't any flying. We've had several factory orders coming from USA, stating from March. They were shipped via USPS and then the tracking just stopped and stood still at various cities for weeks and weeks. Apparently huge quantities of air freight from the US to Europe has been diverted to container ships, and I can imagine there are humongous warehouses full of shipments waiting for some means of transportation.
Also, China was practically closed for a month or more. Even semi-junk mail from Chinese companies stopped. We asked some of our Chinese suppliers when we might be able to make orders that actually ship. The answers were vague, as if they were not allowed to say how things actually worked.
Many suppliers will run out of goods to supply over the coming months, depending on where the products or parts needed to manufacture them come from.
--mika
OlivierC:I opened this thread not as a complaint.
And my reply was certainly not aimed at you - just a general observation, that might help people understand why things don’t currently always happen the way one would expect. I certainly wasn’t aware earlier just how big percentage of air freight used to travel on passenger airliners.