From Russia With ... A Pretty Long Wait?

Hi, there, people. Anyone here on Stereo2Go done business with any boombox-sellers in earth's geopolitical titan in, oh, the past ten years or so? What's it like waiting for those good-sized packages to arrive at your home all the way from the Moscow area of Russia?

I really should tailor the question for S2Gers here in America: what's the longest that you've waited for a boombox -- perhaps especially one bought on eBay -- to arrive at your residence here in the United States from the Russian Federation? And in what month was that electromechanical elation ordered?

Of course, you gotta account for any middleman in all this. So let's start: do Customs over at JFK International Airport in New York really delay delivery of goods from Russia this much?


(Image apparently from an August 2012 entry on gali-arulraj.blogpost.com)

 

Wish I could help but never yet sell a bbx stuff on Ebay.

 

Thanks, guys, for giving me further cause for pause in my temptation to openly accuse the eBay seller. I sent a message with a sort of warning to the seller earlier today. His reply was prompt -- it seems to have been in recent days -- and was perhaps surprisingly civil, despite the slowly increasing accusation in my messages' tone. He sent me the large, clear (smartphone) photograph of what seems to be the slip of some package-inquiry document he claims to have obtained to reassure me. (The document is in Russian, of course, blue handwriting and all.) It even seems to be date-stamped for April 18, 2018, the day the inquiry was apparently began. Don't know if Mystic Traveller can see if the document looks legit' or ... (Shrug)



I'll wait a while longer for the seemingly mint-condition Panasonic to arrive here -- while hoping that date won't be The Twelfth Of Never. (Shaking my head)

 

This slip says that your package been mailed on April 18... When did you pay for the goodies?

 

What I see here:

it's so called "tear-off portion/slip" of some post document,
it reads your parcel tracking number EPxxRU - I run this number in the Russian Post tracking system,
as per it it was indeed sent out from Moscow on Mar 24th and on 27th of MArch it left Russia,
finally arrived at JFK US on Mar 31, 17:20 (USPS), here the track stops, so now this box in the US (still at Customs?).
Weight - 10 kilos 760 g.

I checked the whole track in the Russian language, here you can find it up to the export point n English:

https://www.ems.post/en/global-network/tracking

So it took a week from when he brought the parcel to the post office in Moscow
until the point it landed in JFK - fairly quick actually!
Wouldn't have believed that speed hadn't I seen the tracing.

 

This is just the date of this slip, so it was possibly an inquiry of the sender.

 

LOL, it was sent March 24? Dude, it's only been 3 and a half weeks. That's been my average time for packages from Germany, so I'd expect packages from Russia to take even longer. Relax.

And yes, customs will inspect and even take apart a radio if they're suspicious. Never send a 120V radio to Europe without taping the power supply with bold letters "WARNING: 120V" or they will destroy it by applying 220V.

They will also detour the package to intelligence services if you're on a target list, and they might plant a tracking device, poison, or hallucinogenic into it.

 

Just as long as it's not being sent to Salisbury, you're fine.

 

my bad, the seller did go beyond "the call of duty" of actually going to the PostOffice to get The Proof!!! When I do the same thing here about lost packages, I just get a blank stare from USPS office folks... Yet another proof that Mama Russia is Grand!!?...

My own story sounds like a "fisherman bragging": a set of belts from @mihokm got stuck for over a month at NY customs, but when he sent me another set, this second set "picked up" the first one from the customs Limbo and they both arrived tied together with a rubber band!!! Sooo... if nothing happens, just buy another one from the same seller

BTW my bragging of buying National boombox from my co-patriot Ukrainian did not happen: he claimed that he has no PayPal account and the only way to pay is by bank transfer. Next day I see this same bbox listed for $1,500 on eBay, it got sold within a week... I Got Lucky!!!! Or maybe not, I shall never know, $800 still sounds like a sweet deal for RX-7200!

 

Yep, the seller filed a search inquiry with the post service on his end - this scan is a tear-off proof of receipt.

BTW, our colleague Easthelp can do the same on his end too - to send a search reaquest to EMS -
it may help speed
things up.

 

..and good news: as per tracking the parcel was handed over to addressee..
If not for the customs delay it would have made it a way faster.

 

Right. Well here is my 2c worth. I received my "mint" Aiwa HS-G09 ex USA in partially dismantled and incorrectly reassembled fashion. The seller accused me of tampering with it myself. What???. I believe now that US Customs opened it up during the parcel bomb investigation lost one of the case screws and put it back together incorrectly. Of course there was nothing in or on the package to explain how it came to arrive in the condition it did.

 

Thanks, folks, for weighing in with your advice and your observations. As a matter of fact, the boombox arrived here at our home in Florida on Saturday, April 21, 2018. It arrived shortly before noon. (Eastern Time, naturally. And, yes, I have e-mailed the happily patient seller to tell him that, yes, the stereo is here in one piece and, no, I did not justifiably worry.) Yes, the shipping carton was quite big, as the eBay seller cautioned would be the case. Here's the one smartphone photograph that I took of the package not long after its arrival. It's sitting (not so pretty) on my bedroom desk:



It was a while before I focused on unboxing it and examining the contents. I started the cutting open of the carton early in the morning, even before getting anything resembling proper sleep. (Shrug) Imagine my surprise to discover that what was supposed to be top -- the "up" end -- of the carton was in fact the bottom of the box! It was treated as if it were the topside of the box, what with the EMS shipment label and other documentation attached to the "top." No wonder I ran into those big staples rather firmly holding the flaps in place. (C'mon, budge, you tenaciously fastened so-and-so!)



When all that cutting of and tugging at cardboard, Styrofoam, Russian Post tape and white, fibrous, "bookending" stuff (not asbestos, I hope!) was done, this, it would seem, is the diamond in all that rough (and roughed up):



No, it's not yet tested; in fact, I haven't even powered it on with batteries. (Don't have ten "D" cell batteries lying around, for one thing, I shrug to say.)

Please don't scold me for the delay, folks. I'm thinking that I'd better run this fine-looking find with a 110V/220V power converter. (Hence my asking about one here on Stereo2Go a while ago, with prompt, helpful replies.) I placed an order for one today, as a matter of fact. At least, I think I did. I tried to order one yesterday, along with another, allegedly necessary item that I have now decided against. I was incautious enough to use a prepaid VISA card with a slightly lower remaining balance on it than was the total for the order. (The order total had apparently gone up by -- get this -- forty-odd cents since my "dry run" of the order several weeks ago.) I assumed -- or hoped -- that Amazon website algorithms would simply "cycle" through the several other prepaid VISA cards listed in my member account until they detected one with a balance big enough to add to the first card's balance to pay for the order. But who's kidding who?

I kept suspecting that the order wouldn't go through, despite Amazon sending me a "Thank You For Your Order" e-mail. So I sent an e-mail to Amazon that same evening, asking for help of some sort. A customer representative stated what I suspected I would be reminded of:

"In this case I would like to inform you that you'll need to choose a single payment method to place your order; you can't split your payment between multiple cards."

Repeated checks of my prepaid cards' balances online kept showing no activity; there was no payment debited from them, so there was no credible sign of the order being paid for. That was why I decided to contact Amazon and, earlier today, why I cancelled the two-item order. I tried to place the order for the power converter again -- this time without that strange extra item. (Don't ask.) I now wonder, though, if Amazon's algorithms have "blacklisted" that particular VISA card of mine. I have this feeling (maybe silly) that days from now, there will be no "Your Order Has Shipped" message from Amazon and, more telling, that there will be no deduction from the card's balance to pay for the order. (Though the VISA card's balance is now more than enough to pay for the big, black box of a gadget, shipping and all.)

Concerning the April 19 admonishment of member Reli: hopefully I'm not overreacting again ...

 

Is the Aiwa HS-G09 a model with rechargeable batteries? A scanned advertisement that I saw minutes ago from Walkman-Archive.com suggests that idea to me, with the bold words RECHARGEABLE displayed in a slim dry cell's outline. I don't know if the HX-G09 can record. It's described as an "Auto Reverse Cassette Player," not as an "Auto Reverse Cassette Recorder," so I doubt it. But it's still a shame to all but lose that unit to short shrift. (Though of course one would be reminded of the gravity of national security.) Uh, was that personal Aiwa ever salvaged and rebuilt?

 

Ah, how droll, Michelle Knight. Even -- or especially -- from someone residing in the land that, some would say, is home to Ground Zero for those ghastly events that struck -- and all but slew -- father and daughter. (Sigh)

 

No the HS-G09 is a player with 5 band graphic and uses standard AAA batteries. Of course I only ever use rechargeable batteries in my players but the unit predates the inbuilt recharge feature. Not sure I would want to leave any batteries in a Walkman for more than a few days anyway. Oh and I did get it reassembled and working after the tampering episode.

 

Glad it arrived safely .