Ordering goods from China

Dael_Pix

Dael_Pix

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I placed an order for a lens adapter and it was despatched from China on 3rd September.

How long does it take to arrive in the UK? Surely it doesn't take a month?

Can anyone help?
 
Can take up to a month. If you ordered through Ebay right it off as it was probably cheap or contact paypal.
 
October 2nd delivery time. I'm just fed up waiting for it now.
 
Dael_Pix said:
October 2nd delivery time. I'm just fed up waiting for it now.
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I've ordered a few things from mainland China and Hong Kong and it's not unusual for it to take up to a month for delivery, especially for cheap items without any form of expedited shipping.

The last time I ordered from a Chinese seller it arrived exactly when they said it would, four weeks from the original date of purchase.
 
I'm waiting for wide angle IPcam lens and it should come this week.
Similar story - low cost post/courier has the drawback of being slow and no real tracking.
Other items have always come eventually.
They have a chart of typical delivery times

Clipboard01.jpg
 
Beware too if you're ordering from Amazon market place sellers, as lots are now based in China.
It's very hard to tell where your goods are being dispatched from unless you dig deep into the sellers info before buying, especially with camera gear.
 
I've ordered quite a few cheapo things from the far east and so far all have arrived.
 
I always say China is great if you don't mind waiting. I have bought many things from there for years, some take a couple of weeks, some could take a month or more but they all arrived. You just need to be patient.

The question I always ask is how do they send me the stuff and make a profit? I used to own an iphone 3g and I bought all these covers on ebay from China, they were 10p each including postage, how anyone could send something that far and make a profit out of 10p is beyond me. My last purchase was a rubber lens hood £1.50 including postage; arrived within 2 weeks.
 
I ordered a remote shutter release for my Lumix G2 from a company in China called Best Offer Buy. It cost about £2.50 and the postage was free. They said to allow between 5 and 20 working days for delivery. In my case it took about 12 working days.

Slightly off topic but it really was a bargain, Panasonic wanted £60 for one.
 
Hong Kong is usually quite reasonable. mainland China can be very slow.
 
Yeah, 2-3 weeks is standard. I'm waiting on a Yongnuo flash posted from HK on the 9th.
 
Sometimes it can be very fast.

I ordered £25 worth of small items (non photographic) from a company in Beijing last Sunday. They have sent them post free. Tracker showed them to be in DHL West Midlands depot this morning. I should have them tomorrow.
 
arclight said:
Sometimes it can be very fast.

I ordered £25 worth of small items (non photographic) from a company in Beijing last Sunday. They have sent them post free. Tracker showed them to be in DHL West Midlands depot this morning. I should have them tomorrow.
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Onestop Digital deliver to me in under 48 hours. :D
 
I ordered a condom from china, took about 90 seconds to come:)

So pleased I ordered another one for next year(y)
 
Steve T said:
I ordered a condom from china, took about 90 seconds to come:)

So pleased I ordered another one for next year(y)
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Letters from France take longer than that.:LOL:
 
Should have it next week then. Just hope I'm in when the postie comes as my parents will be on a coach trip to Ireland..
 
I recently had a small a amount left on a PayPal gift card and ordered a flash diffuser for 99p delivered from China. Arrived in a huge package by tracked courier in about 3 days.
 
about two weeks, i ordered a cable release last month from hongkong.
 
I had multiple items arrived outside eBay's 45 day allowance. It wasnt a pleasant experience. Different seller names on eBay but was the same person behind it. And sent through the same package. I thought it was dodgy that this person had multiple trade names. Pressed very hard on delivery information etc. But the China post website only showed in transit and nothing for well over a month. That gave me a lot of grief and thus have stopped buying from China or HK on eBay since. But just bought a Huion H610 Pro as they are all from China... Fully expect it to turn up closer to xmas ....
 
China Post, the Chinese post office, is hopelessly inefficient and very slow. Most cheap item are sent via that route.
DHL (and other couriers) are far quicker but far more expensive too.
I think that the real question if buying from China shouldn't be "How long will it take" but "What will happen if it goes wrong"
 
As for the cheap phone covers and similiar low value items. The reason why their so cheap, is that usually they are a newish registered seller (usually an old seller creating another account) on ebay and they want to get there feedback up high and 100%, hence the high turnover of low value items, when they know we will give 100 % feedback and their offering free postage. When established they usually start selling higher value items and then dump the 99p sales and there feedback usually starts falling for poor service. Then the cycle begins again.

An example of the higher value items they then start selling is the LED Lenser torches, which are usually fakes.

The other old trick for dodgy UK sellers, was to sell plant seeds for 10p to build up there feedback. Again when they have a lot of 100% feedback people buy off them whithout looking what there feedback is for. They then start selling higher value items and then things start going Pete Tong.

I always try to look what the sellers feedback is like for different items sold before I purchase larger value items on ebay.
 
ive bought loads of car parts etc from aliexpress.com and all have been free postage using china express, everything has always been delivered in specified times (usually 40 days) but lost have arrived within 1-2 weeks

OEM Ford Kuga mudflaps set of 4, £60 from ford, 12.55 from aliexpress or 100 sets for £2.11 each from alibaba.com, tis is how ebay sellers make a living
 
I've had stuff from hk or china turn up within days, others take weeks... Alll dirt cheap items
 
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