Asian Art Gallery Forum

[Antonio73]

I’d like to have information about my order. According to your order status check page it would have been delivered “on or just after October 6th”. I read your post about mounting the artwork for the Chinese Government so I comprehend I little delay is normal but still I’d like to know an approximate delivery date.

Thanks,

Antonio

[Gary]

It was slightly delayed due to that issue. We shipped it the moment we were finished with that project on September 29th.

The registered mail item number is RR65455182CN

It should have arrived by now. However, I do not know why, but Italy often has very slow mail delivery compared to the rest of Europe (except Greece, which can be slower than Italy). This should have been delivered on October 8th if it was anywhere else in the EU. Italy can be 7-10 days slower and lately there have been some customs bureau delays randomly as well.

Please take the above number to your local post office or check the Italian Post website to see if you can get more information.

Sorry for the delay and trouble. I wish I had control of how packages are delivered via the mail.

Yours,
-Gary.

[Antonio73]

At the post office the told me not to worry because the Italian Customs bureau stops every item for 20 days (great efficiency!!!). Anyway the mail item number you wrote is wrong because the bumber would be of 9 digits, maybe you forgot a "0" at the end or at the beginning. Can you check?
Thanks
Antonio

[Gary]

Wow, that is the best "don't worry" message ever

I guess that explains why for the last year, we've had a lot of trouble with orders to Italy. It used to just be slower than most other countries, but this year we've had several delays making the delivery take a full month.

I've also had some reports of taxes, customs duty, or VAT collected upon delivery in Italy. This also does not happen anywhere else (in most EU countries, hand-painted artwork is duty-free - plus we mark it as "gift" anyway on customs forms).

You are correct about the number I gave you. It is missing a digit. They must have miss-keyed in Beijing when they shipped it. I have sent a message to Beijing for a correction (I am in the USA at the moment). They are sleeping in China now, but I will give you corrected information when someone wakes up and reads the email there.

I guess I may have to put special notes on our website for Italian customers. I don't want to do that, as it might look like I don't like Italy. That would be far from true - I ride an Italian cyclocross bicycle and a track-racing (pista) bicycle here in the USA, and watch the Giro de Italia on TV every year.

In my opinion, the only problem Italy has is Silvio Berlusconi's control of the media. But then, we had George W. Bush, so maybe Berlusconi is not so bad.

Ciao!
-Gary.

[Gary]

The correct number is RR654551820CN

I tracked this on the China Post website, which indicates that this was loaded on an airplane bound for Italy on October 3rd.

You can see that too by entering the number above on this web page and clicking the arrow next to the place you enter the number:
http://intmail.183.com.cn/item/trace/itemTraceAction.do
Italy is 意大利 in Chinese. The dates should be obvious.

We dropped it off on the 29th of September, it left that post office on September 30th. On October 3rd it was loaded on an airplane and departed for Italy.

We can suppose that the package was on Italian soil on the 3rd or 4th of October. If they are holding it for 20 days as they told you, I guess the 24th of October is the release date.

Sorry for the delay and trouble.

-Gary.

[Antonio73]

The wall scroll has finally arrived this morning!!! and I have to say that it's a very fine work (my wife appreciated it a lot!!!)
I succeded at tracing the delivery with the Italian post website and I found that the item was released by the customs bureau on october 14th (it means they held it just 10 days to let Berlusconi look into it ). The remaining 6 days to come from Milan to Pisa (300Km) .
It was a pleasure to deal with you and maybe youll'hear of me again for more in the future.
Ciao!
Antonio

[Gary]

Glad to hear that you received it and are pleased.

I am going to try to come up with some kind of message for our Italian customers. I think I can write some code that produces a popup message if the IP of the website visitor is from Italy. It's on my to-do list, so maybe by next month it will be done and installed.

The message will be something like,"Italian Customers: Please note that you should add up to 20 days to any delivery time frames shown on our website due to the slowness/policies of the Italian Customs Bureau".

Do you think this message will offend Italian customers?

Maybe I should start the message with "We love our Italian customers, however..."

Ciao!
-Gary.

[Antonio73]

I understand no offense in your message. You specify that it do not depend on you and in addiction I guess most italian people would not be particularly surprised. I don't know how to say it in english but in Italy it would sound something like "we do know our chickens!" that means "we know who we have to deal with!"

Ciao

Antonio