How international packages travel from seller to door: customs clearance, import duties, shipping times by country, and step-by-step guides for SHEIN and Chinese carriers.
A package crossing a border passes through more hands than most people realise. It leaves the seller, moves through the origin country's postal or logistics system, transfers to an international carrier, clears customs at the destination, and then enters the domestic delivery network. At any of those stages tracking can go quiet for days, not because the package is lost, but because the systems between countries do not always communicate.
The guides in this category cover what actually happens at each stage. The customs clearance guide explains how CBP screens consumer packages, why most clear without a hold, and what gets a shipment held. The import duties guide covers what replaced the $800 de minimis threshold, and why purchases from AliExpress, Temu and eBay are now assessed at the border regardless of value. The shipping times guide gives realistic country-by-country transit windows, not the optimistic estimates shown at checkout.
If you are tracking a package from China, start with the guide on why shipping from China takes so long. It maps the full seven-step journey, and the usual explanation for a tracking number that has not moved in a week is that the parcel is waiting at an air cargo facility for a flight rather than that it is lost. Read the SHEIN guide alongside it: SHEIN ships items marked Local from a US warehouse and other items from international warehouses, which take longer, so the source of your order changes what a quiet tracking page means.
The checkout estimate is almost always the optimistic end of the range. This guide gives you realistic numbers, country by country.
Read articleMost consumer packages clear US Customs without a hold. Here's what gets a package held and what to do.
Read articleMany customs holds clear without any action from you. This guide sets out when to wait, when to contact the seller or carrier, and when to escalate.
Read articleAs of October 2026, US shipments worth $800 or less no longer enter duty-free. What you owe depends on what the item is and where it was made.
Read articleYour AliExpress package is not lost. It's probably waiting at an air cargo facility for a flight. Here's the complete 7-step journey.
Read articleSHEIN ships from a US warehouse and directly from China. Know which one your order is coming from before you buy.
Read articleOfficial pages these guides rely on, checked in October 2026.
Most international packages clear US customs without a hold, and tracking moves on to the delivering carrier once CBP releases the parcel. Packages that get held typically involve undeclared goods, incorrect valuations, or items on restricted lists. Clearance can take longer in November and December, when parcel volumes peak.
Yes, for anything you buy from a seller abroad. As of October 2026, the US no longer gives duty-free treatment to shipments worth $800 or less: it stopped for China and Hong Kong on 2 May 2025 and for all countries on 29 August 2025 (Executive Order 14324), so purchases of any value pay the duty that applies to the item. On 24 June 2026 CBP published two interim final rules that suspend the exemption indefinitely, one for mail and one for all other modes, and the statutory exemption is repealed from 1 July 2027. The change does not affect bona fide gifts of $100 or less sent by a person abroad, or the duty-free personal exemptions for travelers, which CBP sets at $200, $800 or $1,600 depending on the trip.
Gaps of 4 to 10 days between scans are common on international postal parcels. The most common gaps happen during air transport (packages are not scanned in flight), at the handoff between the origin postal system and the US carrier, and during customs review. Investigate only when total elapsed time exceeds the estimated delivery window by more than 7 days.
If customs has not asked you for anything, wait and keep checking tracking. Most holds resolve automatically. If you receive a formal notice requesting documentation, respond within the specified window, usually 5–30 days. If the hold runs past the seller's delivery estimate with no movement and no notice, contact the seller first; they may need to submit corrected documentation to customs.
AliExpress provides a tracking number once the seller ships. Find it in the order details under Orders in your AliExpress account, then track it there or paste it into the ParcelsZen tracker, which identifies the carrier from the tracking number. A 13-character number ending in CN follows the UPU S10 format (2 letters, 8 digits, 1 check digit, then the country code), so it was issued under China's authority as a UPU member country. If your number does not match this format, ask the seller which service shipped it.
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