delayed delivery of parcel

[gafney9664]

Hi

Approx two weeks ago posted two small parcels from bury st edmunds to cyprus where my daughter is studying at University.
The parcels ought to have taken 5 days to be delivered to her in time for her birthday on 23 Oct 2023. These parcels seem still to be stuck at Langley. The tracking numbers are as follows : LB737840475GB an
LB737840489GB. 14 days have elapsed and it appears that the items are still in the UK. It seems that you cant send an email to RM and also impossible to make contact telephonically via customer services. Calls are just disconnected. It seems not to be possible to visit RM in person at Langley to retrieve the parcels and make use of another service provider.

Is the only option to wait out the 42 days and hope that the parcels are returned? The contents contain some fairly valuable items which will cost me a fair amount to replace.

Any assistance would be appreciated

[Snaggletooth]

Both parcels have been put on planes, so they are probably currently sat in Cypriot customs awaiting checks.

No, you can’t visit Langley. Even if you could, it would be impractical for RM to retrieve them and illegal for RM to hand them over.

You can email RM using the form on the customer services section of their website, which starts an email conversation. But as the issue appears to be at the Cypriot end they won’t be able to do much.

“Valuable items” could be the source of the problem. What did you send?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

There are delays with Cyprus at the moment.

Cyprus
Start date: 2 October 2023
Latest Update: 5 October 2023
End date: Ongoing
Incident: IT System Maintenance

Cyprus Post have informed us that part of the governments IT system will be disconnected for a maintenance upgrade from Friday 6th October until Monday 9th October. During this period Cyprus Post cannot handle mail and short delays are likely to be experienced during and immediately after this period of downtime.

https://www.royalmail.com/international ... t-bulletin

[gafney9664]

Both parcels have been put on planes, so they are probably currently sat in Cypriot customs awaiting checks.

No, you can’t visit Langley. Even if you could, it would be impractical for RM to retrieve them and illegal for RM to hand them over.

You can email RM using the form on the customer services section of their website, which starts an email conversation. But as the issue appears to be at the Cypriot end they won’t be able to do much.

“Valuable items” could be the source of the problem. What did you send?

Hi

Thank you very much for your response.

The tracking at rm still says "Your item is being prepared for despatch overseas." The Cypriot parcel tracking service contains no update that the parcels have arrived in Cyprus.

In any event I will ask my daughter to make some enquiries at the postal authorities in Cyprus.

The items were clothing, running shoes, small back pack and some earings that we bought at John Lewis.

Kind regards

[Snaggletooth]

When I look at RM tracking, for the first item I have the last entry as “ Item Leaving the UK” on the 25th, which effectively means that it was put on the plane. The second item does appear to still be at Langley though, sorry I seem to have missed that the first time.

Earrings could cause a problem, depending on what they are made of and how they were described on the customs declaration. Get that combination wrong and any customs service anywhere would likely stop the package for extra checks. And that is without the delays in Cypriot customs that TBT has mentioned.

If I have understood the Cypriot customs website correctly, goods made of precious metals need prior permission. So one of the following two should apply:

If the jewellery is made of precious metals, the parcel should carry the authorisation from the Cypriot government;

If the jewellery is not made of precious metal, the customs declaration should state that (e.g. use the phrase “costume jewellery”).

https://www.mof.gov.cy/mof/customs/cust ... enDocument

RM will often stop items and examine items at Langley if they appear to be problematic for customs at the other end. This is a benefit to customers as items may be returned to sender instead of destroyed by customs at the other end. Is it the case that the earrings are in the package that hasn’t left the UK?

[gafney9664]

Thank you for your response once more.

My wife spent some time phoning the cypriot postal dept this morning and they claim that no parcels have yet arrived in Cyprus.

They claimed that the items get sent to another country in Europe before being delivered to Cyprus!

I did not list the contents - just marked the contents as birthday presents

Cant remember which parcel the earings were in - def costume jewelry -cost about 20 or 30 pounds.

I think we just going to write it off as an expensive lesson and wont sent presents via post in future.

Thanks

Kind regards

[Snaggletooth]

You can’t just write “birthday presents”. Customs have to check against their restricted & prohibited items list, and they need to know how much tax to charge (if any). This could well be the hold up on both items: one intercepted by Royal Mail as problematic, the other not.

Parcels don’t arrive in a country until they have cleared customs.

The one that only got as far as Langley will probably be returned to you eventually. Hard to say what will happen to the other one.