Hmm. Deliveries. 6 weeks is not unusual. Three months might be the record, but I lose track, pardon the pun. I have several duplicates from Amazon, because we report an item not delivered, whereupon it turns up, sometimes along with its replacement, "delivered" at the same time.
My post has several possible options: most often, it is left in the village coffee shop, on the assumption that I will be in for a coffee at any minute, so it will be convenient for me. I never drink coffee, at least, not in the coffee shop.
Option 2 would be having my post left at someone's house. Someone in the village, obviously, because there is no way postie is coming all the way up the hill to my place! That's steep, that is!
Option 3; postie may telephone me so I can meet him at a random location, and swap envelopes, signatures etc. That is actually pretty handy - personal service, as it were. Note that I may have to drive three or four miles to find him, and he may have left by then.
Option 4. CBA is official government policy so no suprise there - my post may or may not be back at the post office, and I may or may not be able to go into the back room and have a rummage through all the parcels to see what has turned up. It's like an exciting game of lucky dip, and I can go home with anyone's post if I want to. (Only happened once, in error).
Good news is that we have the private couriers well trained, and they take everything to the post office, where the staff are happy to sign for us (always make friends with your postie). What happens after that is fairly random - see above. Note that whilst couriers are "supposed" to deliver to the house, it has never, not once, not ever, happened.
There is a tendency to moan and complain about foreigners doing weirdly foreign thing in their own foreign country, and I do live in paradise, but the postal system and mail-order is a bit trying, even the locals admit. However, "Lost in the post" isn't an excuse, it is the national condition.
