I was part of the UT01 group buy. I ordered it on ~12/5. I forget the exact date. It arrived on 12/21.
This time of year is hard to get stuff out of China. You are better of using domestic (relative to you) sellers until some time after the new year celebrations.
OK let me help you
Order and forget is what is best
Only if it takes two months start contacting vendors
Want it fast, buy local but ordering from China just assume itntakes 60 days and all before that is a pleasant surprise 
When you use GearBest free shipping they wait until they have a bulk amount of orders. Post nl gives them a discount for shipping 500 or 1000 packages at a time and then it comes slow boat to america. Then through customs if your lucky you place your order on the tail end of the bulk shipment.
I had one order of batteries that didn’t arrive for like 2 months 8x ga about 6-7 months ago I had insurance. But they wanted me to wait 90 days before they would do anything. I contacted them after 5 weeks or so. I just order now stuff not in a rush and forget like miller said when it shows it does.
Yes
The key word is “pre advised”
This means they collect packages till the minimum of bulk discount is reached.
You see an email saying it is shipped but it actually is waiting for enough parcels
Do your heart a favor and just order and forget, it works like a charm
I agree.
It will come, well almost always…
I have had to open some disputes too when the delivery date was not met, but it usually arrives afteral, often before the dispute is acted upon, so i could close those disputes before they acted upon it.
This though:
That shipping insurance and tracking they offer.
Does it legally mean, when i don’t buy tracking and insurance, that any loss of parcels is just my tough luck?
Or are they still legally supposed to have the goods delivered to me?
So, can they say “Sorry, you should have bought insurance and tracking.” without having to resend the item or refund me?
Or can i say: “Sorry, the package has not arrived after 2 months, please resend item / refund me or i will pursue a (Paypal/CC) dispute.”
Obviously someone could lie about not receiving the goods, and have the seller resend or refund…
This probably happens in reality too…
So i can imagine the shops want to have shipping insurance and tracking for themselves, so they don’t have to refund or resend because they can then be sure the delivery was made.
Like a lot of others, I ordered a few of the BLF 348’s with the last group buy November 29th. Added a Jet - 1 MK just to get one more quality light in hand. Almost 47 years of using junk; I want quality! Tracking says it’s been in US customs since December 11th, which I realize is probably not really true, just that PostNL is hardly likely to keep up with whatever the USPS is doing.
I’ve decided to wait until Feb 2nd, after the Chinese holiday to contact them (if it still hasn’t shown up). That would be a total of 66 days. I want to be patient but from now on will try to stay with domestic companies as much as possible. Any shenanigans, I’ll contact Paypal and order somewhere else. Be patient, young grasshopper! And I’ll try the same…
Joe
ETA: OP, check out this thread for the Thorfire VG10 Amazon deal.
Better still, make several orders, two or three per week for a month, then you will have surprises arrive at various times across the next four months.
No, it’s true.
I’ve had a package sit “inbound into customs NYC” for 6 months before.
Package had long been replaced by sender, when one day the original made it’s way out of customs
and to my door. It was quite amazing, as the item was $300 and I ended up with two of them! 
Either way they will make good on your order.
This checkbox option is known in the industry as the
“would you like to pay an extra fee” checkbox. :money_mouth_face:
The package has a trackable number regardless.
They will replace it regardless.
Some sites have an extra fee and checkbox for “expedited processing”
usually costing $2 extra or so. It’s just a ruse to get 2 extra dollars.
Tested this with a buddy, one of us paid the $2, one of us didn’t,
both arrived same day. He immediately implemented the same option
on his own ecommerce website. Earned him an extra $6,000 the first year.
I did a lot orders fastest was a Jetbeam that came after 5days slowest 10 weeks.
I did notice that a lot orders now come to Germany and get here the Label with my shipping address, below is a chineese label but no sign of my address on it.
They probably put as much orders in one big parcel and that gets here opened and relabeled for shipping.
Ever had an order from China arrive in about a week? I have. I must have ordered the same day they reached their order quantity to get their shipping discount. It’s happened a few times actually.
I used to work in a fulfillment center and you’d be surprised the discount given to mass shippers vs “retail” rates.
Those overnight and express packages are a gold mine for bulk shippers.
An you thought QVC and HSN made their money off of selling products ???
Me too! Fastest one ever was ordered on a Saturday and received the following Thursday.
Shipped from Shanghai via DHL express.
Me too but it was something really small like S2/A6 O rings and a micro usb plug.
My last order from china was completed a few days after an order from the usa, only a few states over and the stuff from china beat the stuff from Colorado. Sometimes you get lucky 
sometimes you just wait…………and wait.
Hahaha true
I always choose untracked thus free shipping and one item ( rarely 2) per order.
This is handy in case of a problem then only talk about 1 item
And it creates more packages so quota reached sooner
I know from experience that the average delivery time from China to Scotland is about 3 weeks. It varies wildly, though. I placed a whole stack of EBay orders in November / December and the first item dropped through the letterbox in ten days. It ramped up until about 3 weeks, then slowly tailed off, although there were still a fair few things coming in at 4 weeks.
However.
About 10% of my stuff didn’t show up for at least 8 weeks, with the slowest package taking bang on 10 weeks. I was all set to file an EBay case on that last one, because Buyer Protection was about to run out and the seller was stalling on a refund, but fortunately, the package arrived on the very day I would have filed the case.
No missing packages in the end, but some pretty impressive delivery times at both ends of the spectrum!
Now for comparison, that VG10 arrived in just 13 days from the time of order. If all stuff from China would arrive this quickly, I’d probably be buying a lot more of it.
I know this is wishful thinking….but someday (for those of us in the USA) I hope most of us are ordering all our goodies from another state…not another country
I know….wishful thinking
I can only imagine what would have to take place before that could become reality.
I have a GB order that was placed the day before Thanksgiving. It is still listed as sitting in the PostNL facility. I really am tired of this crap, KD and Banggood are faster, but still not fast.
Then we would have to remove the word ‘budget’ from the name of this forum.
It could be a reality if our new president gets his way. It might also kill BLF since EVERY discussion topic on this forum involves something imported from Asia at a relatively discounted price.