Find a great gimmick through e-bay.com. Close the bid with a seriours seller. Pay the auction ASAP. Get the gimmick delivered straight to your home.
Look for the latest Michael Chricton book. Order on Amazon.com. Have it shipped through the standard shipping. Wait a few weeks and get the book.
What’s wrong with this scenario?
Nothing, unless you live in Italy.
Italian online buyers start complaining about the huge delays – usually months – in delivering the goods they’ve purchased. For the very first time since about ten years, in the past weeks I have myself experienced a two consecutive shipment’s losses from (an innocent) Amazon.com.
It seems that the main reason for this paralysis, is the fast growing-rate increase of a (well rooted) Italian bureau-jungle. Since Poste Italiane – in the past not surely known as a synonym of efficiency – start acting as custom duties collecting agency, the bureaucratic overload, crossed with lack of personnel, produced a global slowdown in the delivering of ordinary, foreign coming packages.
So what?
I might use an express courier. Yes, it is safe, but it’s costy, then I have to buy less things. And for sure I wouldn’t risk a micro-purchase (such an online auction advertised memorabilia) with the realistic perspective of waiting months – if not the whole life. Further more, people might not be ready to pay a huge increase in shipping expenses, thus simply stop buying online.
Conclusion: if the main target of the Italian economic infrastructure is carefully avoid any international business exchange, we are surely on the right path… to nowhere.