Just got an order from Chai in China, which took about 3 weeks to arrive. 1 1/2 of which (Thursday to Monday 11 days later) were spent in customs at Stansted. Apparently they are currently stopping a lot of stuff which causes a lot of backlog. My shipment was one of the ones that got stopped.

So ... what i learned from the experience:

1. Get Chai to put the correct description and cost on your parcel in case it gets stopped.
2. Check your parcel tracking early and often. As soon as it says "available for clearance" call them up. They'll want a copy of your PayPal receipt emailed to them. I ended up having to email mine twice.
3. Keep pestering them. I phoned every couple of days. The FedEx tracking page is pretty uninformative and (my experience only) by phone the FedEx staff are willing to help but not that much cop.

I ended up having 3 phone calls, including one to complain about the whole process, and also an email exchange with a FedEx guy from Twitter. I have to say I'm not the world's most patient guy, and I was heartily sick of the whole process by the time the parcel arrived this morning.

FYI my shipment (cost of about 190USD or 126GBP) came through without extra charges or duty of any kind, which is pretty good (think the rules say that I owed the VAT + handling charge), so FedEx must have been doing something right, even if it was taking a while to happen.

Hope this is of some use to others ...

Chris Owens.