Shipping delays due to Covid-19 / Coronavirus

Last update: August 28th, 2020

With the ungoing health crisis in the world due to the Covid-19 / Corona virus, many customers are experiencing or will experience delays in shipping times.

UPDATE: regular shipping has resumed to: Australia, South Africa, Thailand, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates.

UPDATE: regular shipping to France has resumed! Customers in France now will be able to choose (as it was before) for regular shipping OR pay extra for priority shipping and handling with BUZZ via DHL.

UPDATE: bPost is resuming regular shipping to Hongkong, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and Zuid-Korea as well, as of Friday, May 22nd! Customers in these countries now will be able to choose (as it was before) for regular shipping OR pay extra for priority shipping and handling with BUZZ via DHL.

IMPORTANT: as of Tuesday, May 12th at 11 AM CEST, bPost is resuming shipping to the following countries: USA, Canada, China, Russia and Brazil. For those countries, the 'cheaper' DHL option will no longer exist, but you'll be able to choose for regular shipping OR pay extra for priority shipping and handling with BUZZ via DHL.

________________________________________________

All items shipped outside of the EU are experiencing long delays. Because there are significantly less airplanes flying back and forth, it takes a lot longer for mail cargo to depart. If your parcel is departing from Belgium to anywhere outside the EU, or an item is being returned from outside the EU to Belgium, and tracking does not update for a few weeks (!), this is considered normal at the moment. 

Inside of the EU specifically, because of the complete lock down in Italy, we are also seeing long delays in shipments to and from Italy.

For all shipments outside of the EU, we are obliged to switch to DHL Express. Regular shipping outside the EU is currently not available at bPost. Gillio is bearing the extra cost for these shipments, so the price for our customers remains unchanged. Please note, some customers have reported a higher chance of customs fees being charged when using DHL. Pictures can still be requested.

We cannot 'hold' parcels at the office. Because of Belgian and European legislation, we have to ship anything that has beed purchased and cannot keep the parcels that have been paid for, in storage. 

France is experiencing mayor difficulties in shipments as well, with several days in which the distribution network is and will be closed. All shipments in France have delays, and bPost is currently only allowing DHL Express shipments. We have updated the website to have all future shipments to France to be shipped with DHL Express, at no extra cost to you (just as for outside Europe, you only pay the regular price, Gillio pays the difference).

Inquiries for parcels that are deemed 'lost':

These shipment delays also impact the times that bpost calculates before an item is deemed 'lost'. Right now, there are 4 extra weeks added to the 'regular' delays (read here) before an item can be deemed lost and an investigation will be started, as this crisis impacts the entire world and all cargo transport worldwide.

These numbers are the information that we received so far by bPost, and might change in the future.

Please note that these delays are entirely out of our control. Our staff cannot do anything about delays parcels nor will the postal service start investigations before the specified 'waiting time' is up.

This also applies to parcels that were already en route before this message!

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

We will update this page with more news once we receive it.