From March to early May parcels to the US got caught up in a shipping nightmare. They were sent to Shanghai, scanned in tracking on the 19th May, then no update since then. Chinapost repeatedly told us that they were just stuck and would be delivered and we took them at their word. We've been chasing this up for months with them and finally got through to the manager of the Yunnan Chinapost office.
According to him, Chinapost were under a lot of pressure during the Covid crisis here and flights to the US were stopped. Parcels to the US were sent to Shanghai - apparently more than 300,000kg of parcels. Someone there made the decision to send these via third countries to the US - some going to Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia. These countries still had flights going to the US. After that, he's unable to say what has happened - the information he's been able to get hasn't been clear. He said he heard several possible possibilities - that they've been stuck in these third countries, that they were sent to the US and were stuck there or possibly that the information from Shanghai airport is incorrect and that they're still stuck there. He's unable to say.
With this news, we've decided that our best approach is to offer credit notes to the customers with orders affected. Some of the teas that people have ordered are still in stock, others are out of stock. Hopefully a credit note will allow customers to offer the teas or teaware they wish at this point in time. If the original parcels eventually arrive we'll offer the choice for customers to purchase these or return them.
With people who have teaclub parcels from April and May outstanding, we're going to recreate these parcels for you. We still have stock of the April tea, but the May Long Jing is out of stock. We'll find some tea to create a mini teaclub just for you and send these with your December teaclub.
This will take a little time to organise logistically from our side, but hopefully those affected should receive an email in a week or so. Thank you so much to all our customers who have been so patient with this situation. We've been doing our best to work through this as best we can and feel the time has come to resolve this situation once and for all.
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