Ordered some expensive Eurail pass tickets from my agent in Houston and had a family member ship them 3-5 day int´l mail to San Sebastian. Yesterday (Saturday) was the 5th day and nothing arrived. Anyone know when I should reasonably expect them. The problem is I fly out across the continent on Thursday and have to have the tickets by then!

I have mailed documents from Spain to my home in NY and it typically takes 7-8 days. Five (5) days is too soon. I think they should be there by Thursday, but to be honest, you did pushed your luck on this one and should had been better informed before taking such risk. Don't mean to be judgemental, just frank. Wish you the best, Spain is a great destination.

Regular international mail has no guarantee. If one mails out on Monday, it's extremely unlikely you'll get it by Sat, period. Coming Mon or Tue is more like it. [If the regular mail is so good, nobody will be using FedEx or DHL. ]

And don't forget, it is the peak mail season of the year right now.

It's not clear to me what kind of mail delivery service you used, but if it was the special US Global Priority mail (which I think is 3-5 days), I've used that and they arrived in Europe within the promised time frame, no problem. As usual, I think those days would not include "non-business" days, which I guess would include Sunday for sure. If that's the service you used, I would be optimistic.

It took over 2 weeks for a postcard to reach the states I sent from Spain recently.

Okay, I looked up USPS's website. They have Global Express Guaranteed (1-3 days), Global Express (3-5) and Global Priority (4-6) in addition to regular airmail.

Only the 1-3 day one is guaranteed.

AM I reading MothraDave's post wrong? Isn't he mailing TO Spain? Global Priority mail would've been the way to send something FROM Houston to San Sebastian. Would've got there in 3 days. Maybe there are some religious holidays going on in Spain that are delaying mail delivery. I know Germany and Austria seem to have a religious observence virtually every day in December.

We send Global Priority Mail to Spain several times a year. If a package goes out on a Friday, it's often in the Basque County or Navarra by Tuesday, but the system is set up to work on regular 'business day' schedule, so the GP mail can take up to one week to reach the destination in Spain.

I send (and receive) regularly packages from Spain to the States, and it usually takes them between 4 and 6 days. Pretty similar to Robert´s experience (and many time it is faster when coming into Spain). And some of my worst experiences have been with courier services ... it is not the first time that they have returned a package saying that we weren´t at home ...

You can get deliveries on Saturdays if packages have been marked as urgent, but in those cases you must be at home to pick them up. If not, they will leave a note for you to go to your Post Office.

If you haven´t got anything yet, you will have to wait until Wednesday, because tomorrow is a bank holiday (and thursday, too, so it is not the best week ...).

I would go to the Post Office and ask them if they have got anything for you there. Being Christmas time, the volume of work can be really high, and delivery times are a bit longer than the usual.

Another thing. I know that Correos in Spain offers, for certain delivery types, a tracking service. You get a delivery number and check it in their site. I am sure that it is also available for USPS. If your family has sent the package using that, they could give you the number and you could check it (both online and at the post office).

Rgds, Cova

ttt