Iron Curtain

[mikebreenuk]

So heres a question. Why is international economy (formerley surface) mail to eastern europe taking so long. I have 2 items which have taken between 4 and 5 weeks. Yes it might say it should take 5 weeks on the price leaflet but why does economy take only a week more to western europe but 4 weeks more to eastern europe given the price different is the same (20p per parcel). Is there a massive cage of mail at Heathrow thats waiting to be sent or is the cage so small its been forgotton about?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

No cage - its quite simple volume of mail, and how it gets there.

Surface Mail western Europe is done in most cases by a RM subsidiary called GLS so we have the infrastructure in place and everything travels quickly. Also generally Western Europe is a bit closer to the UK. Further Western Europe gets a lot more mail traffic from the UK than everywhere else.

Surface Mail for everywhere else goes by a mixture of rail, road and sea and through reciprocal arrangements within the UPU (part of the UN) all mail is passed to the National Postal service of each country. Therefore because of the distances involved and the different Postal arrangements in each country it can take a long time from dispatch to receipt.