Nine days of waiting, broken into six stages

Share of median transit by handoff, showing that customs is fast and last mile is not. We collected it on 2026-10-05, from 96 entries, and we state the limits as plainly as the finding.

Ownership is clear at seven of the eight handoffs. The exception is the QC verdict, where the warehouse produces evidence and the buyer produces the judgement.

Payment to seller

Agent owns the transaction; you own the accuracy of the buy request.

Seller to warehouse

Seller owns dispatch; agent owns follow-up.

Check-in

Warehouse owns registration; the storage clock starts here at some agents.

QC

Shared and therefore ambiguous — the only genuinely unowned step.

Packing

Warehouse owns dimensions; you own the consolidation instruction.

Export

Agent owns documentation; you own supplying complete details.

Clearance

Carrier owns the filing; you own the declaration.

Last mile

Carrier owns delivery; you own address accuracy.

The three longest tails sit at handoffs two, seven and eight. All three are addressable before payment: a 72-hour rule, an accurate declaration, and a postcode check.

A EU standard order reaches the door in a median of 21 days and a p90 of 36. The tail is not a slower version of the median; it has its own causes, and they are listed rather than left to chance.

Last-mile delivery accounts for the largest single block — five of 21 median days. The two customs steps, which buyers worry about most, account for a combined two to five days in the median case.

Holiday closures

The warehouse closes but the seller clock keeps running, which adds two to three days at the front.

Battery or liquid declaration

A different export route, adding two to four days.

Address failure

A failed delivery attempt adds two days and sometimes a redelivery fee.

Peak season priority loss

The economy lane loses queue position from late October.

Eight handoffs separate payment from delivery. Most disputes come from one of them — the QC verdict — where ownership is genuinely shared and therefore genuinely ambiguous.

Designing around the sequence is mostly about the two ends. Confirm the seller ships within 72 hours, and confirm the delivery address before paying freight rather than after.

1. Set a 72-hour rule at the seller handoff and act on it.
2. Write the QC verdict down before looking at the next photo set.
3. Submit consolidation before packing, not after.
4. Confirm the destination address before paying freight.

With 4 entries averaging $34.83, other/stuff ranks 6 of 8 by item value in our census. What makes it distinctive is not the price but how it packs.

Weight bands across the sample run 38 light, 44 mid and 14 heavy. The category you are buying from shifts those odds considerably: shoes and t-shirts concentrate in the lower bands, jackets in the upper.

• Dense categories — shoes, accessories, headwear — bill on actual weight and are predictable.
• Bulky categories — jackets, hoodies — bill on volume and change at packing.
• Mixed categories — pants, other-stuff — can go either way and carry the widest spread.

Seasonality hits transit harder than it hits freight. The surcharge is the visible part; the queue is the part that costs you a week.

The economy lane often avoids the surcharge entirely and loses priority instead, so the saving shows up as time rather than money. That trade is worth taking in September and questionable in November.

Sensitivity is unevenly distributed. Billed weight and declared value move two segments each, while the lane moves only one — and the lane is the variable people adjust first.

• Billed weight moves freight, and only freight — but by a full band.
• Declared value moves duty and the compensation ceiling together.
• Item value moves the service fee, and only under a percentage model.
• Lane moves freight and transit; it does not move duty at all.

Take a mid (0.8–2 kg) parcel on EU standard at $9.20–$15.10 of freight. A packing change that removes 0.4 kg from the billed weight can be worth more than switching to a cheaper lane, and it does not cost a week.

Three separate charges apply to a return, and only one of them is ever quoted up front. That asymmetry is why change-of-mind returns are more expensive than buyers expect.

The decision rule is arithmetic, not sentiment: if the round-trip freight exceeds half the item value, the return costs more than it recovers unless the item is unusable.

• Check whether the defect is confirmed by the warehouse or only suspected.
• Check the return window — most run 7 to 14 days from delivery.
• Check whether the category accepts returns at all.
• Check whether the item is worth more than the round-trip freight.

The category mix determines which billing method wins, and that determination happens before any lane is chosen.

Thresholds help: below 40% bulky items by weight, packing is the lever; between 40% and 70%, consolidation is; above 70%, lane selection is the only variable left.

• Below 40% bulky by weight: compress before considering a lane change.
• 40–70%: consolidate, and watch the handling tier boundary.
• Above 70%: choose the lane on cost and transit; packing has little effect.

Three source labels apply across this site, and each figure states which. Nothing is presented without a sample size, because a range without one is an opinion.

Known biases are stated rather than hidden: bands are assigned rather than weighed, prices were read once, and duty is modelled rather than assessed. Each of those is a real limitation and each is labelled wherever it appears.

Corrections are logged publicly on the errata page, with the date and what changed.