Regarding delivery delays in Italy

The designated operator of Italy, Poste Italiane, has informed that a number of IT issues have been experienced since 1 July 2021, in conjunction with the entry into force of the new European Union VAT Directive, which involves abolition of the VAT exemption threshold on low-value consignments, entailing changes to the operating model and a new interface with the Italian Customs systems.

While most of these issues have gradually been resolved, two new major issues have recently arisen:

Firstly, for a large number of items originating outside the EU and requiring presentation to Customs, a blocking error message was generated by the customs system, preventing further processing of the items. The Italian Customs resolved this issue in mid-October. Items presented to Customs after mid-October are therefore unaffected by this error message.

The Italian Customs together with Poste Italiane put in place a solution, involving the cancellation of the original customs declaration and subsequent retransmission of the data to the customs system, ans as a result 50% of blocked items have been released. Our IT services are continuously working to solve these issues, together with their Customs counterparts.

Secondly, Poste Italiane is experiencing issues with event data transmission/receipt, at both item and receptacle/dispatch level. As a consequence, international track and trace and Poste Italiane’s internal systems are often not aligned. These disruptions have an impact on track and trace and on the ability of Poste Italiane’s customer service to answer inquiries. The situation has been analyzed, and further developments to the systems are required to resolve the problem. Poste Italiane will inform the deployment date once it is established.

Poste Italiane apologizes for this inconvenience and is committed to resolving the situation as soon as

possible.

Poste Italiane thanks for understanding and will provide an update once the situation is back to normal.