just purchased a toy from a guy on eBay. Claims he shipped it via airmail. gave me a tracking #, but says he was told by Hong Kong Postal Service that due to the Holidays and heightened security in the US, it could take from 21-30 business days to arrive.

True?

Definitely possible - I've been waiting over two weeks for a DVD from Korea & two shirts from the US to arrive...

I mailed something to the Philippines a couple of months back and it took 3 weeks to get there. It's really ridiculous sometimes.

If you don't pay the $30ish charge for EMS, no guarantees on anything.

Same here, my wife bought a Scooby-doo toy for my son on ebay and was told it proberly won't arrive before Christmas. I guess mail service sucks over there.

here was a post at the HK post office site:

Press Release issued on 15 November 2010
Air Mail Services to the United States of America
Hongkong Post announced today (November 15) that due to heightened aviation security measures taken by the United States of America (USA) concerning mail transportation to the country, all air mail services (including Speedpost) from Hong Kong to the USA are subject to delay until further notice.

Stinks, but this was going to happen. You know how piracy is rampant in China? So much so that even drugs are counterfeited there for export here? And you know how the U.S. and China are always in trade talks? Counterfeiting is actually a massive part of the deal with these talks. And since China is so chaotic, the only choke-point to allow for screening of items before export is the shipping service.

In light of toner cartridges being filled with explosives this only makes things worse.

Kind of makes you appreciate what a basic national infrastructure for shipping can provide.

I expect China and other countries are going to start looking at better ways to prescreen and manage their export items before they go out.

have some hope Kirkland...they gave us the same warning (though they said up to 10 days delay) and packages arrived in a few days...so you could get lucky.

all this shit is exactly what "the terrorists" (a deliberately catchall term) want. When a bomb goes off in Jerusalem, the next effing day things are back to normal. Having one incident radically change the entre way business is conducted via airmail around the globe only strengthens the will of those who want to disrupt things.

Kaiju may be OK, but any toys related to mecha/robots may be remotely blown up just to be safe.

Hong Kong isn't China, though. (Well, legally it sort of is, but in practice it's very different and its postal services are way superior)

True. My bad on that. But it is really only marginally better.

Update...

just rec'd pkg from HK. took normal time. actually pretty fast.

internet fears unfounded.

just received a package from Germany that took 31 days.

Funny. I finally received some shirts from the US a couple of days ago after almost three weeks, am still waiting on a DVD from Korea & have received a parcel from a fellow 'Brainer today which took only 10 days from the US to Gemany. Seems things are just generally fucked up right now...

http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/about/news/service_updates/20101102_investigation.html

Not to mention that getting toys from Yemen is even harder now

damnit...!! my next package was from a collector in Yemen..!