Registered Mail From Latvia. USPS Strikes Again Maybe.

I won 5 bids on Latvian New Year's postcards from before the war the second week of December. The seller took them to the post office on 12/14. ebay's expected delivery gave January 6th as a max date(for whatever that's even worth) and with the holidays I figured the mail would be slow. I contacted the seller for some info today and he gave me the Registry number. The Latvia Post Office site gives it a time stamp of 16.12.2019 20:39 as leaving for overseas. If you check with USPS you get status: Pre-shipment, that they are waiting for the item. And if you expand the tracking history, you get the time leaving Latvia but nothing else. I'd rather have the postcards than go thru ebay on a no delivery claim but how long would you give the envelope to show up? Next week will make a month since it was mailed. Normal mail from Latvia is 7-10 days........holidays notwithstanding that is.

John,
my counsel would be to relax and be patient.
Have faith in the postal system.
What you explain, (in my experience) is par for the course.

Amongst others, I purchased 5 Kg of stamp mounts from Canada, tracked,
once it leaves Canada, one is in Limbo, until Australia picks up the package,
and continues the tracking.

My dodgy memory suggests that package took something like 60-70 days.

I have bought a King George V catalogue from Victoria Australia, to Perth, still waiting (15 days)

Good Luck

Catalogue delivered today......

Yay! When you said coming from Victoria I thought about all the fires in the way maybe.

Exactly what I was thinking.

The only difference with yours, my Canadian came via sea, depending on how many cards you purchased , if they are Air, then it is tardy.
Just make sure you are within the ebay complaint window, to get a refund.

I recieved a stamp the other day I bought from ebay. It was sent ordinary mail from Germany and took 30 days exactly to arrive in France(home).
You never know.

perf12 wow! Someone walking could have probably made it faster than that.

rod222 I'm going to give it till the 16th. That will be a month after it left Latvia. If it's not here by then I have the feeling it's not going to end well. I'd really much rather have the postcards. I would assume since it's a letter that it would be going Air Mail. I always wonder if the mail from Latvia goes straight to New York or stops at some central collection point in Europe first.

I have a parcel of non-philatelic purchases en route from Japan, which is coming by SAL. The vendor shipped it on December 2nd, and it finally reached the USPS Distribution Center in Los Angeles on January 5th. I'm still waiting for it here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

One of these days I'll learn that SAL is excruciatingly slow around the holidays and pay a few extra bucks for a faster shipping option....

Update on my own slow parcel: It would also help if the USPS weren't staffed with idiots who keep sending my package back and forth between Oakland and San Francisco!

On the flip side, the USPS did manage to deliver all my Christmas presents quickly. I sent packages from California to New Mexico, Minnesota, and Maryland on the morning of Dec. 17, and all of them reached their destination by Dec. 20.

I can offer a bit of hopeful anecdata. I made a purchase from a high volume seller I've dealt with before based in Warsaw, Poland on November 30. Projected ebay delivery was December 20 but I waited until December 31 to report "no delivery." The seller advised that shipments from Poland to US recently have been taking anywhere from 4-8 weeks after they arrive in the US and that all virtually find their way eventually. Lo and behold, it arrived on January 10.

Tracking shows the envelope finally arrived at USPS Jamaica Processing Center today at 3:38PM. This after having left Latvia December 16th! I guess the boat got delayed somewhere or something.....wow talk about slow. But with luck it may be here in a couple more days. BTW normal Air Mail between Latvia and here is 7 to 10 days.

Great News John, the mail got through!

Rod, with the USPS I never "count my chickens before they hatch", i.e. delivery.

From personal experience, parcels can get misplaced at the local post office, or things can get stuck in the bottom of a mail bag. Or, you could receive something damaged and water soaked several years later in a plastic bag with a note attached explaining that it was found in a mail truck which burned up.

Indeed. I once had tracking show me that a parcel had arrived at the USPS distribution center in Richmond, CA, and I still had to wait a week until it was delivered.

I can walk from my house to the Richmond distribution center in less than an hour.

Finally it's here. Just a quick question, it has an A, Prioritaire label on the front. I know that's normally European mail, but then not Air Mail to the states? I'm just trying to figure out why it took a month to cross the Atlantic.