Post delivery times from Germany to the U.S.

Could anyone tell me how long (approx.) it take for a tiny package (smallest sized one bought at post and sent as Luftpost brief) to get to the East Coast from here.

If it's anything like a postcard from USA to Germany, about 2 weeks!

2 weeks from USA to Germany for a postcard!?!

depends, some of my postcards took 4 days from West Coast to Germany and another batch 2 weeks despite mailing them at the same time...

Letter/postcard will take 5-6 days normally. Package of any size will take no less than that. It depends how you send the package. If you shell out for the full-priced, first class airmail, it should arrive within 6-10 days; otherwise it could take anywhere from three weeks to a couple months.

woof.

Like BD said, every time I've mailed a letter it's taken about 7 days. Might be longer for a package.

I sent it with Luftpost airmail - as a letter althought it is a tiny very light package. Half the size of an A4 envelope.

What?! When I lived in Chicago, my mail consistently arrived in Germany within 3 - 4 days of mailing it. Seriously.

However, from Germany to the US seems to take a bit longer, about a week/ week and a half.

Well I posted a load a load of postcards in Memphis and they all arrived about 2 weeks later, not just in Germany, but England and Holland too.

In my experience going from germany to the US is quicker than vice versa.

My s/o and I send packages back and forth all the time. It always takes longer for Germany to US. I just recieved a post card from him that he sent almost 3 weeks ago, while cards I send to Germany generally take 3-5 business days. I send him packages that usually take 4-7 business days unless it gets tied up in Customs. When he sends me a package it takes sooo long. Once he even spent money on expedited delivery (he spent almost 30 euro extra!) for a bday package and that one took almost 5 weeks!

I think it's because the postal services of each country have agreements only to deliver the packages, but aren't bound by any of the promised delivery times. My postmaster advised me of this when I wanted to spend the extra to get a package to germany a little faster, she said don't bother.

when people from the US sent me stuff it'd take about 4-6 days on avg. When i've sent things US to DE i'm not sure since the people don't tell me if they get it or not and if it is mentioned it's usually after a week or so of them already having it.

I think you have that backwards.


Exactly. A letter to home takes 6-7 days and only 2 of those days are required for it to leave Munich and be on a plane out of Frankfurt heading to the states. When I lived in Md., it took a week to 10 days fro a letter to go to N. Virginia. A distance that I could have driven within an hour by the way.

That's absolute bullshit and you know it. The US Post Office is one of the most efficient postal systems in the world (save for their counter "service"); a first class letter mailed in the continental US will normally arrive within two days. The mail I get from the US generally arrives within six days. The big difference is the price: inland US is less than half what it costs here and international is less than a quarter of the price. A fucking "overnight" letter starts at €51, requires a minimum of three business days and you get no guarantee whatsoever. With a company other than the USPO (who partner now with shitty DHL) from the US to here it's less than half that cost and guaranteed to arrive within three calendar days, and "within 48 hours" as an available option.

woof.

The price is probably a larger difference than the time. Prices for sending a 20g airmail letter:

From USA to Germany (USPS): $0.84 (€0.62)
From Germany to USA (Deutsche Post): €1.70

So it costs nearly three times as much to send a letter from Germany to the USA than vice versa. I honestly have no idea how this country can function properly with Deutsche Post in charge of the postal system.

I don't want to incur the wrath of the Dog but as of tomorrow, inland first class costs $0.41.

And a letter in Germany costs €0.55, over $0.74, so even with a price hike, still close to half of what it costs us here, and that in a country which is physically 270 times as large as this one. A letter from New York City to Hawaii costs the same as a letter within NYC, and both will have been delivered no later than three days.

woof.

I suppose it might depend on where you mailed the package from. If you mailed it from a city with direct flight connections to Germany, it will arrive quicker than if you send it from some hick town in the middle of nowhere, therefore taking a few extra days to arrive.

No it is not. I sent the letter and I know fucking when it arrived. This goes for the letters that I sent from Md. to Tn and to my bank in Texas. It took 2-4 days to Tn and 3-5 days to Texas. The letters to Texas were bank deposits and I knew exactly when it got there because USAA don't fuck around and would immediately credit my account. As for the letters to home, well I have to take the word of my family and friends on when they arrived and I have no reason not to trust them.

Just before I left the DC area some 10 years ago, they found bags and bags of undelivered mail. Hell, they found a trailer full at one of the main POs and postal worker who had bags and bags at his house. I think that my letter to N. Va got caught up in that caper. Supposedly it had been going on for a while when they discover the 2 plus million pieces of mail including nearly a million first class letters.

Here, I have mailed a letter from Munich to a small town in norther Germany and it got there the next day. That kind of freaked me out the first time it happened.

My mail home to Tennessee takes 6 days and only during the anthrax ordeal did that change a bit. My father just sent me a letter on the 1st of May, I got it on Wednesday the 9th. You do the math.
One thing that I have noticed is that packages sent by ground/ship take longer going to the states than they do coming from the states. The difference can be as much as 2 to 3 weeks.

Truth will out.

I sent the letter and I know fucking when it arrived.

A letter.

I think that my letter to N. Va got caught up in that caper.
A caper which involved around a million pieces of mail in a specific region of a system which handles over 600 million pieces each and every fucking day. Which you neglected to mention. It's like laughing that Joe Blow beat Richard Roe by 22 hours in a marathon without mentioning that Roe only had one leg.

Your word of the day: disingenuous.

woof.

How does the USPS keep the costs so low?
Sheer efficiency due the ammount of mail it handles?

Sheer volume. Junk mail covers a lot of the costs.

woof.

Bad Doggie, are you so sure that standard domestic mail in the USA gets delivered so quick?
I seem to remember a few years ago it as 4-5 days...

BTW, I just seen a ltter from the Netherlands to Germany, 72 Eurocents so more than Deutsche Post.

Well, only 2 cents more than Germany (it's now 70c for European deliveries, up from 55c), and that's actually for "priority" mail; "standard" costs 67c. A 20g letter from the Netherlands to the USA costs 89c, barely half the cost from Germany. If you want to send a letter from Germany to the USA, it would actually be cheaper to post the letter to someone in Holland or Britain and have them post it on again. That's how expensive Deutsche Post is.

Practice your Dutch!

have a look here on the US postal service web page

1-3 days according to them.

So why IS Deutsche Post so expensive?

Is it becasue there is no political preassure on the cost of an international letter as opposed to domestic mail?

It's actually pretty complicated but also comes down to volume and an 800 lb. gorilla: the USPS. International post is handled by two different postal systems but only one of them collects money for it. Through the Universal Postal Union, "settlement charges" are paid out among the different postal systems based on volume handled. This is determined by complex statistical methods of sampling loads of mail which come in each day from abroad. The US (with it lion's share of the outbound traffic) pays a lot out but gets discounts because of the sheer volume. They get paid back at full rates by most countries.

woof.

Although USPS can do it cheaper through sheer efficiency of size and supported by a vast ammount of junk mail isn't it the actual delivery of the mail that costs the money?
That's the argument used by the European postal monopolies who have to deliver to ANY address for one domestic price and the argument Deutsche Post have used to try and ban large German postal users using the Netherlands to mail stuff into Germany.

my package arrived in VA yesterday afternoon! I sent it on Tuesday morning. It did not even take 1 week!

The quickest is by Diplomatic Courier via the embassy.

today i sent stuff to DE from US. we'll see how long it takes to get from Milwauke, WI to Munich/Munich areas. I wonder where it'll get to first. Logically it should be Munich, but when i've sent stuff at the same time before Gruenwald has gotten it before Munich and once Poing got it first before Munich.

As for prices 5oz cost $4.50, 1lb11oz cost $15.20, and 5lb15oz cost $29.60.

I've only just noticed this, how can they ban people from posting in the Netherlands?
A few years ago I booked some tickets with KLM for my kids to fly from Maastricht to Munich. Because of some rule about credit card fraud they had to send the tickets from Amsterdam to me, in Germany, and then I had to send them back to Holland. I took out all the guff about their special offers and rules and regulations before I sent them back to Holland but it still cost twice as much to send them back as it had cost to send them here!

last week i received something from Germany; it weighed less than the 5oz package i sent, but it cost more than twice as much for it to be sent here.

DP have argued in court that companies sending bulk mail either physically or electronically and then printed there to be posted from The Netherlands
to German adresses was an infringement of their legal monopoly of mail up to 50g.

Although actually as it stands now, Germany is at the forefront of liberalising its postal market.
Some dodgy news I saw in the paper today that can only lead to pay cuts for DP staff...

as for times. the stuff I sent last Tues, May 22 arrived today May 31. so that's 9 days plus a long weekend (so 2 days of no mail sun-mon).

I mailed a large but lightweight padded envelope from Munich May 22 (and just before closing at 18:00) and it was delivered in Wisconsin May 29 (and that's with the Monday holiday on both sides of the ocean). I think it cost about 5-7 Euros. Not bad for time/cost, IMO.