8/25/2021
Tracking postal items from China: notice for customers
Given the growing number of postal items generated by e-commerce following the easing of global measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic, we draw attention to the fact that citizens and post offices in the region, including Serbia, again encounter situations where sellers often give wrong instructions for the tracking of postal items, which is why buyers do not have the correct information about when the goods should arrive.
Namely, unregistered postal items, which are the most common due to low prices, do not always arrive as postal items from China, but Chinese traders often send them through logistics centres around the world, so it happens that they come to Serbia and other countries of the region from Lithuania, Latvia, Turkey, Solomon Islands, the Netherlands and other countries. In that process, Chinese operators indicate that the unregistered postal item arrived in the country of destination as soon as the goods leave China, i.e. the logistics centre in one of the mentioned countries, which in most cases practically means that the postal item is handed over to the airline company or is in transit.
We emphasize that the Post of Serbia provides its services to customers on its territory without any delay, and incoming postal items from international traffic are delivered to the recipients immediately upon arrival and upon completion of customs clearance procedures, in accordance with the indicated addresses of recipients. Also, in order to establish long-term stable delivery of postal items from China, the Post of Serbia initiated direct negotiations with the national operator of China, and additional acceleration of e-commerce flows is expected in January 2022, announced by introducing a direct Air Serbia flight to Beijing.
On this occasion, we draw the attention of customers once again to the fact that the postal item number that the buyer can obtain from the seller from China, which begins with the letter U (second letter ranging from A to Z) plus 9 digits and ending with the code of the country of origin, is not a number for tracking but is already a bar code label that is entered to ensure the provision of cross-border customs advance data. This means that, regardless of the presence of the U identifier, and in accordance with applicable international regulations, no tracking option is provided for unregistered postal items. If customers want to track the status of their postal items, they should choose the delivery option with registered tracking when shopping online.