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Link below. Curious to see what Ebay and Amazon say about this!
Coronavirus crisis disrupting flow of mail into China
The suspension of flights to slow the spread of a deadly new virus is having a major impact on global flows of letters and parcels, say postal operators in the United States, China and elsewhere.
In a note seen by The Associated Press, the U.S. Postal Service informed its counterparts around the world on Tuesday that it is “experiencing significant difficulties” in dispatching letters, parcels and express mail to China, including Hong Kong and Macau, “because most of its supplier airlines have suspended their flights” to those destinations.
As a consequence and “starting immediately,” USPS said it can no longer accept items destined for China, Hong Kong and Macao “until sufficient transport capacity becomes available.”
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While I rarely ship anything to China other than Shanghai, I do ship to Hong Kong once or twice a month on my other selling sites. I am currently tracking a package shipped to Hong Kong on January 25th. There was no movement on it from the 31st until today. It appears it is finally moving within their postal system and should be delivered shortly, hopefully.
Not sure what to do when it comes to mailing to China and Hong Kong. Will Ebay and Amazon be advising customers that their packages will be delayed? As of this morning, I’ve still seen no indication from either site on this development. I haven’t had any orders from China or Hong Kong since the 25th, so I am not too too worried at the moment. Still, if an order does appear, do I just ship it as normal and hope that Ebay and Amazon have told the customers there that there will be delays?
I also just made sure to stock up on all my shipping supplies. Some prices have doubled over the past month or two, some are out of stock, some prices are unchanged. I bought what I could. Not going crazy or anything with stocking up, just ordering 1 more of everything now rather than wait a month or two when I’ll need to repurchase items anyway. I’d rather pay more to have shipping supplies on hand now than in a month or two when they may possibly not be available or 3x or 4x the price.
In all my years of reselling, I have never seen such a potential disruption in shipping. Not even during SARS or H1N1 or any possible similar incident. This is different. How different it is and how it may impact how us resellers conduct our business remains to be seen. I’d rather be cautious and have a little bit extra in order to continue business uninterrupted.
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Hi. Postal worker here. I work at an international facility and not only are we very limited in what we are shipping to China, we are even more limited in what is coming in from there. I believe we are storing mail that has no flight available in trailers in the yard at this point. It slowly gets assigned a flight but things are super behind and delayed. We have “safety talks” about the situation and have been shown pictures of some poor asian guy in a hazmat suit spraying containers with who knows what to kill any germs. I am actually impressed that there is a system in place to handle something like this.
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Wow, that’s good that some mail is flowing between countries. My sales to China and Hong Kong have completely stopped since early February. Products I’ve tried to buy from China remain completely unavailable, and we’re almost in March now. As much as they paint a picture of it “getting better” in China, the supply chain is still broken down. I’m worried about if the situation expands to other countries – Japan, South Korea. Italy has always been bad for shipping, so it wouldn’t make much of a difference.
I’ve been trying to google info on possible quarantines in the US and what the postal service will do during them, but I’m only finding articles recommending employees at the USPS wash their hands and links to the CDC website on how to maintain health! It’s annoying that the CDC recommends businesses have protocols in place for a possible quarantine, but so far nothing for mail-order businesses. Also no guidance once again for seller protections on any of the selling sites for shipping to and/or from quarantine regions in the US or internationally, if it comes down to it.
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