Brazil, or There and Back Again Thursday April 4th, 2019 – Posted in: AGEA Editora – Tags: , ,

Having sent more than 1,300 books to every corner of the world, we would like to thank the postal services which, with remarkable efficiency, take our editions everywhere, at a reasonable cost.

With very few exceptions, books reach their destination — either within a few days, or after months of bureaucratic customs procedures, but they arrive at the end.

In most shipments the customs procedures are very fast. Some countries even declare books free from import taxes — it is gratifying to see these enlightened policies still standing. Even when they are treated as a commodity, they often do not raise suspicions because they are products of low material value, which often places them below the taxation threshold.

In our experience in most European countries, North America and Oceania, there are usually no delays or problems whatsoever. In America and Mesoamerica there have been some occasional incidents.

But everything has exceptions. We want to present here the case of a delivery that failed to reach its destination because of an error in the recipient’s address. It is worth noting, even in this situation, how the postal system worked efficiently and the packages were returned to origin, across the ocean.

We show above two shipments to Brazil. The first one was done by regular mail with book fares (8 €). Being that in 4-5 weeks the shipment did not reach destination, the buyer contacted us and, following our bona fide policy, we sent a new book. Although the correspondent choose to try this second shipment using the conventional postal tariff again, we decided on our own initiative to cover the costs of tracked postage (approximately € 25).

This allowed to follow the whole process and thus to find where the problem was. It also shed light on the complex process of sending an object from one country to another, the considerable number of steps that must be followed and the time that is used in each of them.

The tracking made proved that the book had not been delivered due to an error in the postal address. We notified the recipient, but we were unable to change the destination address of this second package in the country of destiny, which initiated the return process. While we waited, the first shipment arrived, more than three months after the initial shipment.

In the end, the second shipment also arrived back another three months later.

In the state of the packages you can see the effect of the numerous manipulations to which the packages were submitted. Despite appearances, the state of the returned books was good: the bubble wrap was relatively complete. You can also see the stamps, labels and documents that have been attached at different stages of the process.

We want to take advantage of this story to ask our readers to tell us their experiences. Did your books arrive in good condition? How long did it take? Do you think the packaging of our books is enough? Share with us in our Facebook page!

Thank you for trusting us.