In your appeal, include that you have increased your handling time to allow for extra shipping time, no point blaming the postal service, weather, or other events, they just want an action plan that deals with the issue.

Amazon Italy is a very difficult marketplace, I personally sell thousands of items per month to Italy and have similar issues. If you mention in your appeal that you are going to send everything tracked and with signature confirmation, they have no reason not to reinstate your account. You should also consider increasing you estimated delivery time to the maximum amount (14-21days) and increase your handling time to 5days. For me it worked.

Italy and Spain are a nightmare to send to - their postal systems are very relaxed to say the least - best increase your delivery time to the max and if valuable send signed and tracked. I charge extra on my postage to cover the costs. I do all of this a still get a few sales. Which is fine for me.

I fully endorse everything the other sellers have said here, but we also stopped selling to Italy (and Spain) on November 30th 2017 after having a similar nightmare over Xmas 16. And that was sending EVERYTHING Royal Mail International Tracked & Signed. They say it’s 3-5 day delivery estimate, but that’s wildly optimistic.

Their already terrible postal services grind to a halt throughout December so we just don’t bother.

We started again in early January 2018.

Parceltogo have now added a delivery promise to some of their services, if you really want to continue posting there it might be worth checking out what that includes, but I suspect it still won’t help your INR metrics, you’ll just get a refund when it doesn’t arrive on time.

Incidentally, does anyone have the reason why their postal services are so bad? I’m not looking for mildly xenophobic speculation, rather hard facts on why they’re so terrible?

Royal Mail / GLS get things from the UK to Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and many other EU countries in 72 hours using standard post. Why are Italy & Spain so awful when it comes to post?

We too sell to Italy and send items via Royal Mail, In my experience Italian Post is the worst in the world.

I posted one small Jiffy Bag to Milan as my customer was desperate for this item under £3 cost, he agreed to pay for a 3-5 day Guaranteed delivery via UPS which cost him £25. I posted it on the 23rd February by the 28th it reached Milan. (On the Tracking details.) And that was it, it disappeared. I opened an enquiry case and to date it has still not arrived.

I now send all items to Spain and Italy by a tracked service, at least there’s proof that you have shipped it.

We stopped FBM and went to FBA for all countries (except Germany, our home market) - so we don’t need to take care about items arrive in time or at all, that’s up to Amazon. Of course, deliverance is not a bit more reliable, but at least Amazon will remove negative feedback. (Watch your country limits though…)

I did have a Spanish friend in Madrid. And i sent her something once and it took 3 weeks to arrive! I was stressing out about it but she was really relaxed and its normal the post takes so long. I think its a case of Spain and Italy being more relaxed - maybe to do with the hot weather? add in a few siestas and the age old saying “Mañana, Mañana” (tomorrow, tomorrow). Which means later - but who knows when later is!?

That’s why I think its so bad. Just a more relaxed attitude to doing things a slower pace of life and that includes the post!