[Freak_NL]

This is well-known to anyone who ever looked into AliExpress and other Chinese online stores. Most of the stuff you can buy there has free shipping to pretty much everywhere. The reason why is known too (international postal agreements).

What surprises me today is that nothing seems to have changed yet. Last year it was rumoured that the free ride would gradually end starting this year, but so far the Chinese retailers don't seem to be impacted much — shipping costs are effectively zero for customers in Europe and North America.

If you are unfamiliar with this weird side-effect of the global economy, it helps explain why brick-and-mortar shops selling cheap Chinese stuff for mere cents can exist with a meaningful profit margin.

[jaclaz]

>This is well-known to anyone who ever looked into AliExpress and other Chinese online stores. Most of the stuff you can buy there has free shipping to pretty much everywhere

And there is - just for the record - a perverse incentive to multiply packages.

Here in Italy there is an import duty exemption set at 22 Euros, so what often happens with free shipping via Postal Service (unlike what you would do on local (EU) online stores, where you try to get as much as you can from a same seller to minimize postage and handling) is that people order single items from different vendors, so that each single packet is lower than 22 Euros, and they have the bonus of being sure not to pay any import duty.

[the-dude]

There have been changes : PostNL does not deliver these packages at the door anymore and you have to pick it up at a service location.

[Freak_NL]

PostNL seemingly does this only for packages (not envelopes; these are delivered as you'd expect) sent via China Post containing a '3S' tracking code. A recent purchase of mine got delivered to my door by PostNL; it was shipped via 'AliExpress Standard Shipping' which apparently doesn't get rerouted.