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Help. Americans shipping overseas.

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Gator:
Hi there.  Can any Americans help me with a question?  I have not done a whole lot of overseas shipping.  I helped a few people get Stranger Things Applejack (which, um, not very many left me any positive feedback here sadly :huh:) and every time I've gone to ship overseas, the employee at the post office tells me that there is no way to track my package once it leaves the states.

Then, most recently, I did a trade with a fellow collector in France.  Post office said the same thing, I won't be able to track once package leaves the states.  I got her package in a couple weeks.  After four weeks, she hadn't gotten hers from me.  Well, I tried the tracking number anyway.  It worked.  It said it was at the post office in her town in France, then like the next day "out for delivery" and she got it that day.  So it DID work overseas.

Is the post office lying to me?  I am about to do another trade with someone in Europe.  How do I protect my trade partner and myself if the post office keeps telling me the same thing.  Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks in advance.

SunPony:
I'm not sure about the tracking, I usually send a couple packages overseas each year but I'm not sure if I've ever even looked at the tracking to see if it worked or not (I'm typically sending gifts, not purchases, so I'm less concerned I guess).  Hmm. 

That said, I have definitely gotten conflicting information at different post office branches.  I would suggest you go to a large branch where there is probably alot of international shipping going on, at a time of day that is not busy, explain your situation and what happened last time, and see what they say.

lovesbabysquirmy:
It's not guaranteed to work, that's all.  Not all the databases are the same and they don't communicate with each other.
Sometimes the number stops working because the next country issues it a different number, and if you don't have that new number, you can't find it in the other country's postal tracking website.  It's up to the country's postal workers to have time to do that, and honestly I find that most of the time, they have only the time to deliver it, not tell you where they are taking it!

Barnacle_lady:
There are tracking websites that mentions the complete route to different countries. So you can see which local carrier is supposed to deliver.

Carrehz:
I dunno about the US side of things, but I've had stuff shipped from all over and my experience is that tracking can be kinda spotty. Sometimes the tracking has a perfect record of every single place the package stopped at, other times it just says something like "10 Sep. Left country of origin. 20 Sep. Arrived in UK" no updates between. Maybe your post office just meant they can't guarantee the tracking will be updated all the time, or something?

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