Indiapost - How long does it take an Air Mail parcel to arrive in the UK?

Can anyone tell me how quick and reliable the Indian Air Mail parcel service to the UK is?

I have visited www.indiapost.org and there seem to be three Air Mail parcel services available, and all are economical, compared with prices from the UK, and compared with using a company such as DHL.

1] Sample & Small Packet Air Mail (max weight 2000g) also has an optional Registered Service and a delivery advice required service.

2] Parcel Air Mail (max weight 20Kg) offers an optional Insured, Delivery Advice Required service and a “Delivery free of charges required”.

3] Speed Post International. (max weight 35Kg)

For the "Delivery advice required" service, how do they advise you that the delivery has been made?

If you have any experience of 1] 2] or 3] I would love to hear from you.

Many thanks and best wishes,

John.

What is it you wants to send?? If it's a letter (documents), go for india post, it's easy.

If it is some other types of articles (other than documents), you may need a bit of paperworks (delclerations etc) and also they (the PO chaps) would expect you to pack it in a cloth cover with stitches, a cross thread around it and a medivel shellac seal on it. Yeh, some aspects of of our PO system is frozen in the history

But otherwise they are "cheap & best"

If you are not comfortable with the indian way of doing it, just call Elbee, BlueDart or DHL...the'll takecare of the rest (may be at a bit higher cost)

Thanks Beach.

In the first instance I want to send a few parcels just to test the Air Mail postal service. They will be a few spices, some clothes and a souvenir or two.

If it works well, I will be sending parcels of trade samples (mainly weighing around 2000g) to various locations around the world from my office in Ooty.

I really want to avoid using DHL (the big courier in Ooty) because they are not only expensive, but also make a huge profit by charging an additional fee for Duty and VAT when goods arrive in the UK. This encourages them to charge the Duty and VAT, which the normal UK Postal Service very often does not bother with. The DHL standard fee (from memory) for processing the Duty and VAT charge is Rs.850/-.

FYI: A package of tree seeds (large envelope, about 1/4 kg) sent India airmail from Dehra Dun took over a month to arrive here (Arizona, U.S.).

I've gotten Indian air mail inside of a week. It took about 5 days? It was from Bangalore to the US. I guess this was the express kind.

John.sw... British post office very often does charge VAT and duty, plus the big, rip-off fee 'for collecting the duty', small packets sometimes get through, but if they have a declaratiuon attached that values them over a certain amount they almost certainly will be charged. This is my experience internet shopping for stuff eg from the US.

Thanks Nick.

You're correct - If you purchase goods through the Internet you should be aware that Customs Duty and VAT will be payable when the goods arrive in the UK from a non-EU state, as follows:

Customs Duty - if the amount of duty is UK £7 (Rs.574/-) and over and
Import VAT - if the value of the goods is UK £18 (Rs.1477/-) and over.

The products I will be sending will be low-value and should not attract duty or VAT.

Gifts from one private individual to another, providing the value does not exceed £36 (Rs.2953/-), are also exempt from UK Duty and VAT.

Certain items such as tobacco products and alcohol have additional taxes. One example is cigarettes: The current rate of UK Excise Duty on 200 king size cigarettes is around £32.20 (Rs.2640.87).

I`ve ordered books sent by airmail on a number of occasions - always delivered 7-8 days after placing my order.

John.sw. You are well informed and please forgive me for thinking that you may not have known the Post Office stuff.

One more point, though, (which again, you are probably already familiar with: please excuse!)... Are you sending to a private or a business address in UK? If a business address, then this is irrelevant. If a private address it is an added advantage of Pos Office services that it is easy to collect the item from the local office if the recipient is not in when the postman calls. Arranging to get stuff out of the couriers, once they have failed to deliver the first time can be tedious in the extreme

had me in splits, john.sw! nice one. never thought of looking at the place that way. BTW, did you know there's a bollywood movie with a title 'jism'?

:-)

For anyone from Australia's future reference:

A few kilos of clothes took 2.5 weeks to get from Kerala to Canberra (air mail)
Two dictionaries have taken 2 months (and counting) to get from Dehra Dun to Canberra (sea mail, bookpost)

Average delivery time India --> US was 20 days for regular airmail.

Maps and stuff I've bought in UK from India have arrived within a couple of weeks. The last batch of postcards I sent home last summer took almost a couple of months!