Dear all,
I am writing this entry to inform you on the situation with the current projects, but more importantly on regards the shipping times. I am also glad to inform that shipments to Australia are finally possible again.
As we all know, COVID-19 has caused a very difficult situation worldwide, in the case of the shipments, they also had an impact on their delivery times due this situation.
I have been checking every shipment one by one since June, in order to see what were the delivery times during all these months, and I have been able to gather some information which obviously was more consistent than the one shown at our post service website.
Why do I say more consistent? Because the post office website tells you that shipment may take 15 days, or that it depends on the country of destination, but having the delivery dates within the tracking codes, I have been able to see in a more accurate manner the delivery times.
So bviously, being based in Europe, shipments to Germany, France, Belgium and other European destinations, the shipments usually take a maximum period of 20 days (counting weekends) since posted. Being the average about 15 days, and being Germany the fastest country to have the orders delivered, most of the time in about a week. France used to be pretty quick on last summer but at the end of last year shipping times have increased a bit, where in other cases are still quite fast, so I am wondering that it depends on destination within France.
Within those European destinations, some countries take a bit longer than others, Poland from 12 to 20, Czech Republic from 14 to 25 days.
The surprise for me has been UK, with shipments that took, 6, 9, 11, 9, 10 days, it went to 59 days in the couple recent shipments and well, besides COVID-19, there may be other causes like the Brexit that are making the deliveries to be slower than usual (and vice versa), customs inspections are more careful than before and I must admit, the last couple shipments were shipped without a customs declaration form because they were not required at the time of the shipping (December), but they were required on 1/1. So hopefully and with time, shipments to UK will be delivered as per usual times.
Amongst all of these shipments to EU, there may be always exceptions as the quick a shipment is delievered depends on the workload and situation of the destination country, to that COVID-19 causes are added to the mix.
Outside EU, outside EU there is a thing that I have seen since long ago, and that is that some countries like USA, Canada, Israel do not show the whole tracking status and this is, I believe, due a change in shipping codes (internal national codes) once the package is first scanned at the international arrival station.
Still, the package is registered, and thus they, at the post services should know which International code turned into what national code.
So for this reason, it is hard for me to guesstimate a delivery time to those countries, I have seen packages arrive within 7-15 days (before COVID-19) and I am seeing delays in some particular shipments recently, so I can roughly guess that deliveries may take up from 15 to 35 days in most cases.
This is not happening at all in some other countries outside EU, for example; Russia, Hong Kong, Japan, China, New Zealand, Taiwan, Peru (and some others) they all show the whole tracking information, so that is why I guess that it all depends on how each country handles their international mail, wether they keep the original tracking code or not.
For those listed above, delivery times are usually a month, it can range from 15 minimum to about 40 max, so as far as I can see, shipments are not something consistent because I saw a shipment to New Zealand took 40 days and another one shipped within a month of difference took 27 days.
Please note that I am not writing this as an excuse and blame all to COVID-19 (which for the most part, it is the cause of delays) but all international carriers do mention about the issues caused by the COVID-19 and I wanted to give an informative reference to share with you guys and that represents something that I must change within the store.
I cannot keep the same shipping times I had listed prior COVID-19, and due this situation, other shipping options must be included, either private companies or national express services.
I will be studying this carefully during the next days and hopefully come up with other shipping services that you could chose from besides the existing one.
Now, regarding the projects, I will be brief as I unfortunately do not have photos to share yet, but I would like to say that the 1/144 catering truck has been started and that it will be based on the Mallaghan CT6000 chassis with a Mercedes Atego cabin. This time I do plan to make an American style cabin as well which is something I was not able to do with the former catering model.
The B787 rear galley is on its very final stage, all the base work is done and the last remaining thing to do is make the doors and the other two variants of the front module.
After this is done, I will be working on the stock units for the whole galleys (cockpit/front, center and rear) and will be able to finally move forward to work with the B787 cargo holds.
These will be my first cargo holds using this new method, so I expect to have a basic learning on that to move forward onto the B747-8F/-400F.
That is all for now, work with projects and new units continues.
Best wishes and stay safe,
Guillem