hi, new guy here!
i've been into home video collecting since the distant 2001, when Kubrick movies came out on DVD here in italy
jump forward 22 years and the steelbook bug suddenly bites! i only had two in my regular blurays, one for Glengarry Glen Ross the other for season 4 of Breaking bad, both purchased by chance
then 4k collecting begins, after many years of relative inactivity, and i start noticing all these special editions with cool art... i buy Clockwork orange TOC because i find it cheaper than the regular one, ditto for Shawshank redemption (not a great looking steelbook admittedly, i've since resold it and bought another one, as well as rebought the 4k along with The green mile...)
so, i start looking around in january for cool steelbooks of movies i love or even some nice flicks i never bothered to buy, like Cube or Predestination...
these two in particular took a long time to find at a low price: finally, in march, i discover a finnish guy selling Predestination for 10 bucks on huuto.net
i write, ask how much shipping is to italy (IF he will ship, damn covid!!!), no reply, i keep looking (there's a guy selling the same steel in my own town but he asks thrice as much! damn globalization...)
almost a month later he finally writes back, says he will ship to italy but it's 22 euros... so i start browsing through his other steels, i might as well buy Dr Strangelove which i only have on dvd (a jewel box and the japanese superbit, are these worth anything btw?) and maybe Brazil
i give him a list, en passant, of all the steelbooks i'm still looking for, and it turns out he has most of them, but from his personal collection and not really for sale
View attachment 555730these are some of those, along with a few others he doesn't have
my mouth is salivating at the mist alone, not to talk about Fargo! (incidentally, that is the new 4k remaster bluray, which looks alot better than the regular blu i already have)
i write back offering 20 euros for each of them, on top of the 10 for Predestination and 15 for Strangelove we had already agreed upon, just as a long shot, not really hoping he'll say yes...
but he does!!! I'm on the moon, I can't believe i found someone who doesn't know what he has!
so, sunday april 2nd i paypal him the money and on monday he ships the package with posti and gives me the tracking
the next night the packet is already at the Helsinki airport so i'm anticipating a very happy Easter with most of my steels wishlist finally in my house...
but alas, no such luck! the packet doesn't arrive by friday, which means i have to wait till next tuesday... oh well
but the tracking shows no update the following week, so i'm starting to worry
i write to the seller, he sends me receipts upon receipts (he had also sent me photos of the items before shipping, so i'm not worried about frauds), tells me sometimes shipping can take a little longer, anyway next monday (this is the 17th now!) he will go to the post office again and will ask about my packet, so i patiently wait another weekend...
and then tragedy strikes!
at the end of monday i ask the sender if he discovered something at the post office but, out of the blue, he stops replying to my emails, the tracking is still stuck at april 4th 3.36 AM, i am out 130 euros and nothing to show for it...
i start writing to posti, after a few days they finally reply back but they just keep saying the same thing: the sender has to file a claim to start an inquiry, NOT the receiver, regardless of who paid for the shipping! also, they keep saying the packet has left finland even though all the tracking sites show the item to be at Vantaa
not having other options i go to MY post office to ask what's what, they tell me the parcels leaving italy take a different tracking code, so that probably happened to packets coming from abroad as well
i think this is absurd but i start fearing the tracking is NOT up to date and possibly the mailman has left the parcel somewhere in my building and someone else picked it up!!! (this has never happened by the way, but i'm positively paranoic after a month of waiting for the biggest, most precious purchase of my life!)
i find a little reassurance this is NOT the case when i stumble upon a forum lamenting months long delays for packets getting stuck at the italian exchange office in milan: i start thinking this has happened to me too, either in milan or probably in helsinki, even though i don't know what the hell they even have to check since we are all part of EU!!!
but finding tracking codes of items getting silent for TWO months and finally getting delivered eases my pain a bit, although the prospect of waiting possibly till summer is NOT a pleasant one (but better than the package being lost or stolen or even damaged)
i also find a courier guy on the streets and interrogate him: he assures me bigger packages like mine get delivered by them, not the regular postman, and they call whenever they don't find the recipient at home
so i'm sure at least the packet has NOT been delivered to the wrong person and i keep waiting
in the meantime i file a claim with MY posts, just because i CAN here, and start pestering posti with menacing mails every day, basically i went Andy Dufresne on their asses...
they keep saying the same useless ****, but at least they reply, which the original seller never did anymore (i wrote to him on facebook, i even wrote anonimously to a different mail he had feigning interest for his VHS... he never replied to that either, i wonder if he's dead or just in some way knew it was always me...)
finally, last sunday, they said the packet HAD reached italy!!!
i had activated mail alerts for the tracking, cause i was sick and tired of checking every day and always finding it stuck for SIX WEEKS, but of course those, also, didn't work, so i had to get the news from posti... just as well since i had to wait till monday anyway to actually GET the package
so, i'm relieved that the tracking finally moved, like those i had seen on the italian forum, but i still don't the have the parcel in my hands, do I? it could be damaged, the wrong items could be inside, there might even be an error with the tracking
so, after a weekend relatively happy, monday starts and i'm counting the hours
after lunch i start watching some sport program (the Giro is on hold...) but my mind is elsewhere
3 PM, no delivery
4 PM, no delivery
5 PM, no ******* delivery....
i check online to see couriers timetables, it says they deliver till 6 but SDA, which works with poste, delivers till 7
so 6 PM comes and i still have nothing
i'm going crazy, i can't watch tv, i sit at my window and fix the street below, hoping to see the blu minivan of SDA
FINALLY, at 6 ******* 16, he pulls over and rings me... i NEVER got a package this late in more than 20 years of ordering online!
i get it, and guess what? it's NOT a regular blank cardboard box, it's an LG bluray player box.... the idiot recicled something he had in his house but didn't ever bother to cover the writings!!! this would never be allowed here! i suspect this might be the reason for the SEVEN WEEKS travel period (i could have WALKED to ******* finland...)
anyway, i finally open it and everything is perfect inside, every steelbook inside its protector, there's even a piece of paper detailing my order, he WAS a stand up guy after all but why the f... did he stop writing me back??? i'll never know
so, this is my story, as someone else said, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of thing... assuming there's an happy ending waiting and nobody confiscates seminude posters in a prison for 17 years...
