A Short Trip to London with my new Nikon:)

Hope you liked the pictures...

Old Bottle, New Wine

This contraption I saw today morning when I was in London. While walking near the tower bridge among many other interesting things, this one caught my eye. First I was pretty excited to see this camera from a distance, even had thought of getting photograph taken, just to get a feel of the bygone days of photography. All these thoughts vanished like the horns of an unicorn, when I had a close look at the cam. Observe the lens, it's a compact zoom camera glued inside the old camera box:D Still a fun thing to look at though, and may be it's giving tourists a feel of being shot on a historical equipment.

Feast Your Eyes

true ! :)

Update:
http://www.europe-nikon.com/en_GB/news_room/news_releases_main.page?Period=Recent&Quarter=0&SY=0&ID=templatedata\en_GB\news_article\data\BV-NR-WWA1108-EISAD7000

Finally ^_^ #2

Heyyy,
For the glorious second time the item (seems to be) delivered at my door step (and currently with the house owner, who runs a salon next door). The next best thing is I don't have to walk a mile to pick it up from the DHL
stocking location. Instead I can just go home and check the pack at the door. Anyways, right now got quite
a lot of work to finish and waiting eagerly to unwrap the pack:) Will post pics;)

Cheers,
Sid

Phase#2: The Inspection

As per the online stats, the parcel has been delivered today and ideally the inspection should take 2 days. I am not much worried about the item, as am sure of the issue. My concern is the packaging, as I hadn't wrapped it well during transit to save money (Few grams extra weight = Double the courier cost). Though had requested post office folks to mark is as 'fragile'. Hopefully Royal Mail and Hong Kong mail people respect fragile items and have delivered it in a immaculate condition:) Else....(To be continued)

Cheers,
Sid

Royal Mail Airsure - International Signed Delivery & Why/When NOT to use it!

Hi,
Royal Mail Postal Service is miles (won't say light years, if you thought so!) ahead of postal service in India due to various reasons, which I am not going to dwelve into in this post (and some are beyond my awareness and intrerest). Having used their service at various occasions I could vouch for the dependability, except 'Airsure - Signed International Delivery' service which I used recently for shipping back an expensive online purchase. Here is what the website says about the facilities provided as part of this service:

http://www.royalmail.com/personal-customers/international-personal/sending-individual-items


Well I missed to read that it's trackable only in UK. Again having said that we all(if you have reead my last 4-5 posts) can tell how good the tracking can be, from the DHL tracker log I had shared. But in this case the status was a bit 'VAGUE' and looks somewhat like these:

STATUS #1

[ I don't have the screenshot for 1st status that I got just(end of day) after posting the item at post office, which said:

"You item posted on 06/03/2012 has been received and currently being process at the International Shipping Facility to be sent to the overseas address." ]

Which was pretty encouraging as this update comes immediately after they pick up your item from the post office(usually end of day/5.30pm). But mind you, this status is kinda sticky and stays on for 2 days and thats when you start getting the should-have-sent-through-DHL feeling!

STATUS #2

This status was shown for 3 days (I guess).

STATUS #3 (Hopefully this is the last one.)

This one came up today just after I got a mail from recipients that they enquired with Hong Kong post for this parcel and they got to know it arrived today.

Double Checking At Destination Country #1

Finally I went to the Hong Kong postal site and tried tracking the parcel and was happy to see some positive response:)

So, the lesson I learnt is, if you are sending something valuable (read expensive) then better go for Parcel Force (part of Royal Mail but more professional service) or if budget allows then for DHL or UPS (haven't used their service but have a high regard, don't know why!). Also make sure you declare the product cost correctly and opt for a proper insurance amount for your peace of mind (insurance for the item and peace of mind for...your mind!! duh! lollzz). Trust me, it's better to pay bit more than to worry for the period (which is again uncertain if you going for a lousy service) the item is in transit. Definately in case of loss or damage, claim process might not be straight forward or satisfactory. Hope this help you make better decisions while shipping items overseas.

Cheers,

Sid