Just had an interesting message from a Chinese eBay seller:

ballisticbrian

Attention:

Because 2012 Olympic Games are held in UK, the approximate clearance time ofyour parcels to UK may be longer than usual. It means you have to wait severaldays more for your parcels. As an international seller, we hope the clearancetime will go on track after the Olympics. Thank you.

soolin

In March I got a message from one seller telling me that their new year celebrations (that were already over) would delay my item.

duncan-biscuits

That was really nice of them to let you know! Ha why even last year would the Olympics in London have affected Chinese delivery times.

I got a sellers dispatch email wishing me a Merry Christmas two days ago , when I wrote back saying "you are a bit early but ta anyway " he was laughing too but had said he simply has forgotten "how to change his settings"!

This_Year

I had a message from a chinese seller too telling me that items posted from China can take weeks to get to the UK and this was out of his hands. He then emailed again to tell me to leave 5* across the board on feedback as anything less than that was equivalent to a negative.

This being around 5 days after I received his parcel and left his feedback.

He had marked it dispatched on Feb 28th then emailed me on March 9th to say he had sent it out.

He has since emailed me again and advised that he has now left me positive feedback as the transaction went well.

Thanks for that :undecided

zerog

This_Year wrote: »

I had a message from a chinese seller too telling me that items posted from China can take weeks to get to the UK and this was out of his hands. He then emailed again to tell me to leave 5* across the board on feedback as anything less than that was equivalent to a negative.

This being around 5 days after I received his parcel and left his feedback.

He had marked it dispatched on Feb 28th then emailed me on March 9th to say he had sent it out.

He has since emailed me again and advised that he has now left me positive feedback as the transaction went well.

Thanks for that :undecided

So did you leave 5 stars?

MothballsWallet

On a side note, I posted a small (under 2kg) parcel to my Mrs in Russia back in mid-January. It only reached her last week...

ballisticbrian

A friend of mine wanted to return to China a small piece of material, something strange or specialised for making camera filters. When they asked to return it, they got an email explaining all the hassle that would be involved in returning an item, and further explained that they could find other uses of it, such as "a christmas present for one of your friends".