I recently had a nice deal with LordotMilk.
He paid by Paypal, and I shipped a box of items to Switzerland from the US.
The USPS tracked the item out of the country.
According to LotM, the Swiss postal system has no record of the parcel, and never delivered it.

What is the accepted protocol for these situations? I have shipped dozens of items to Europe in the past few months, and this is a first.

Though we are basically both at a loss, I have offered simply to refund the payment, and trust LotM to send payment should the package arrive.
It was shipped on September 11, and left the US on the 13th, according to the USPS, so it should have arrived weeks ago.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

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Three weeks to another country is not unheard of. More than likely it's sitting in a custom's office and hasn't been scanned yet. If it were Italy or Greece I'd be worried, but not Switzerland. I'd give it a couple more weeks.

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Dave

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Indeed! I live in belgium, and regretfully, it is not unusual for stuff to stay in the customs office for longer than it takes to travel the distance.

It's the price you pay if you receive goods from outside europe

What Dave said. I have shipped almost as much as an aquatic mammal (due to the supplements we sold) and I've never had a package go bad for Switzerland. I recall it taking almost three weeks for it to arrive, so yours wouldn't be too far out of the norm.

Italy and Spain are the only places where I have had things get lost. Germany is the only place that seemed to deliver my packages by dunking them in a swimming pool (Blacklegion!! I still feel awful about that package!).

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It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

I've got a package to switzerland delayed somewhere too

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My (current) record is three months from the UK to the US. Unfortunately patience is not just a virtue but a neccessity.

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SG

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Yeah ... I'd bet its sitting in Customs ... Damn the Bureacrats !!!!!

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Received Steve54 parcel yesterday.

Went to pick it up today.

But this was from the UK...

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I have previously had a package from UK. It was somehow first sent to Netherlands and held at their customs, and then send to Denmark before i could pick it up.
Took about 3 months.

Teritus, it's very important to note when using a tracking a number from USPS it tracks out of the country. Which you already know, but, the postal service on the other side does not use our tracking number. The only way to get something like this is to use, Fedex or UPS but they charge considerably more then USPS, like $80+ dollars. With that being the issues i stopped shipping to europe from Ebay because people can just lie and say it didn't arrive. I had to ask a bunch of annoying questions of the postal worker when they had a big line of people waiting to get this info out of them. They will simply charge you for tracking when they know it doesn't do shit past US customs.

Blind-

I just had a similar situation with Australia. I shipped some paint brushes to a guy and it took three months for him to get them. Up to that point, I have never had a problem - I've had packages arrive in less than a week prior to that. I felt bad for the guy who paid $50 for these brushes and didn't have anything to show for it, but on the other hand, I paid for and shipped them, so I couldn't just give his money back...

Turns out, customs was apparently holding it for some reason, and they don't notify anyone when this happens. So yeah, customs can be a pain in the butt.

Honestly, the only way around this is to a) ship with a global carrier and pay the extra cost; or b) offer the disclaimer that international packages are not guaranteed to arrive in a timely manner (if at all.) It sucks, but unless the buyer wants to pony up more for shipping than the actual item is worth, your hands are tied...

I would recommend international buyers always use a credit card for payment through Paypal - that way charges can be reversed if the package disappears.

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