I bought a nice 8 day Omega clock mounted in a mahogany case from a fairly remote area of South Africa on the 10th July. I paid for it the same evening and was hoping to receive it around 20th July as stated in the listing.

Due to the sellers location I was expecting to wait a couple of weeks for delivery. So I waited and waited and kept checking the tracking info which after 2 weeks was showing that the package had arrived at the sorting depot in Cape Town, and then waited some more and checked, double checked and then re-checked the tracking....I think we all know how it goes in this situation.

I then contacted the fairly novice seller to ask if he could find out something at his end as my tracking info was still showing the package as being at the postal depot after 3 weeks in transit.

To cut a long story short it turns out that my package had been shipped surface mail and not airmail, so it's actually coming by ship.

Hopefully as I type this it is somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean making its way slowly to Europe. Now I don't have much experience of South African mail ships travelling on the northern European passage but 9 weeks and counting strikes me as being pretty long for this journey, does anyone here have any experience here of buying from SA and the waiting times involved?

Here's the clock in question, kind of a tombstone look

 

Sorry cannot help with shipping times, but nice clock!

 

Just hope they sent it up the Atlantic side and not the Indian side !!

 

I remember, a few years back, over a winter, there were some shipping restrictions to US for parcels over 1 kg. So all parcels over, went ground/cargo. Although i have originally paid for a registered air mail, it took ~10 weeks to deliver. Once it arrived in the USPS mail center, the tracking showed up online.

On the other hand, i can't vouch for a Gulf of Aden route...

/F

 

Hopefully it will turn up eventually without any further issues

I've had items sent from Argentina to the Middle East, took 6 weeks and this happened on both occasions. Also just this year a Christmas card from Spain arrived after 55 days - maybe it also went by ship instead of airmail

 

There are very strict security protocols for incoming packages from that part of the world. Any packages containing mechanical items or electronics are highly scrutinized. Mostly because that's where "things" have been found in the past. It's unfortunate, but that is the world we live in today.

If they ran into Somali pirates, they took a wrong turn somewhere....lol.

 

...or by foot!

 

Yes, finally, the `mahogany tombstone` arrived yesterday and is now ticking away nicely on my mantelpiece.

Being an 8 day car/vehicle clock from around the 1930s that at some point in its life has been mounted into a custom built wooden case it is not exactly a collectors grade piece, but at just over 100 euros, including 11 week land mail shipping, it was a very affordable vintage timepiece indeed and I´m actually quite pleased with its quirky charm.

 

When you consider the cost of an 11 week tour, the clock was basically free.

Wish I had time for such a leisurely holiday!

Well done on this addition!