Customs delay from China. How long should I reasonably wait?

I have only purchased one audio component from China, and it took around 15 days to arrive at my door. As far as your item being chosen randomly for inspection by customs, that only takes minutes to open and tape back. I know this firsthand. We are not talking about a live animal that needs to be quarantined here!

A BIG CLUE is that the seller would not know that the item was randomly picked for inspection, unless he was watching via a remote camera in China!  A customs agent would not even give a random caller the time of day, and that's if the caller knew the number to call, as well as the agent involved!

You have good reason to be skeptical.

If you are indeed getting scammed, you will never get your $ back from the seller. Your best course of action would be to have your credit card company reverse the charge. I hope you didn’t pay via another method. Best of luck!

If customs randomly chooses your package for inspection, it'll take awhile. It's not the fault of the sender. I had a package from England (a pocket knife) that sat forever in customs until they felt good and ready to inspect it and send it on its way.  All in all in took about three weeks to get it. Another one from the same manufacturer only took a week. 

The sender and I had the info that it was stuck in customs, allowing me to contact them but it didn't make anything go any faster. I hope this works out for you.

All the best,
Nonoise

You are being F-ed with.

Get your refund and buy elsewhere.

Not China but a package from New Zealand got hung up in customs for two months. It's nerve wracking.

+1 nonoise - Once customs decides to select it for inspection it's out of everyone's hands including yours. I had that happen with a shipment from Canada and waited 2 weeks for release

Relax.  Packages from China are being more thoroughly inspected due to counterfeit items and illicit drugs being sent to the US.  I have had packages caught in customs from China which the manufacturer has re-shipped that arrived months after the re-shipped package arrived.  

Ordered some speakers from Germany and stayed in Customs about 2 weeks.

Well worth the wait.

11 days is nothing. and your only choice is to wait.  Your distributor is very kind.  He must realize he has a high maintenance customer that need his hand held.

I’ve had items get caught up in customs. Most items arrive between 10 days and 3 weeks, that one arrived in 7 weeks. Wasn’t the sellers fault.

That’s horrible ,for example I bought 2-3 things from Denafrips and LHY -  Jays audio , 3 business days not counting weekends , on average ,that sounds Waay too long .

If this were true then Aliexpress would be out of business.

Packages from China are being more thoroughly inspected due to counterfeit items and illicit drugs being sent to the US.  I have had packages caught in customs from China which the manufacturer has re-shipped that arrived months after the re-shipped package arrived.  

I had a similar experience with FedEx when importing a preamp from the USA to Australia. It was stuck with either Australian Customs or FedEx and I couldn't get any information from either. In fact it was virtually impossible to contact them at all. It took over 3 weeks to get an email from Customs indicating the amount of duty payable..

I would never buy any audio equipment from China. 

What do you think is going to happen? Seller can’t get it sent back. It’s out of their hands and yours. Maybe take it like a champ and understand the situation at hand. I’ve had to wait two months for a package coming from fedex and it was at a hub a couple miles away just sitting in a container when the place was backed up. Your situation is no one’s fault and happens to the best (and the worst.) of us. Customs gives absolutely no care in the world about any of us. Yea, it sucks but oh well. Be happy sooner or later you will get something really cool in the mail and the extra wait will only add excitement to the purchase and delivery. I hope you don’t give the seller grief and demand anything. That would be messed up and uncalled for. Anyone saying they would demand a refund and buy else where need not to veer far away from their local Amazon prime sensibilities. 

Thanks for all the posts. Hopefully this will get resolved soon.

The level of vibrant speculation from some folks about this is somethin else. Express shippers like FedEx can receive and forward inspection notices because of the backlogs they generally cause. It doesn’t seem suspect in and of itself.

As some mentioned, can take many more days or weeks (or in less common circumstances, much longer still). Lucky when it’s audio toys and not perishables. Good down time to reflect on being lucky enough to have time and option to type the discrepancy online, hey? 😉

Hope it’s a good piece of kit when ya finally get it!

I ordered glue to refoam a pair of old speakers through Amazon. It took six weeks to arrive from China, five of which were in Canadian customs. Someone there must have been sniffing it.

Customs can take anywhere from 2 days to 2 months.

Here's an update on my package. Customs released it on 3/14/24 to FedEx and they have no idea where it is. It hasn't moved since it was released a week ago and FedEx has no idea why. Keep being told they are looking into it. I'm ready to bail on this and do a charge back before it's too late!

I’m sorry about your experience. My recently purchased Jay’s Audio CDT2-MK3 transport arrived from China via FedEx in less than a week which really surprised me.

Looks like everything might work out after all. Package found and should be here in the next day or two.