Package stuck in customs for 3 weeks - should I be worried?
Honestly, three weeks in customs is nothing to lose sleep over, especially this time of year. I’ve had packages sit at ISC New York for nearly a month before they finally cleared, and then they were through in a day once they hit the regional sort facility. Customs processing speed depends a lot on which courier service you used. If you went with USPS (which typically gets handed off from your vendor's local postal service), you’re at the mercy of the slowest transit hubs — they’ll often route through customs at JFK, LAX, or Chicago, and those can get backlogged for weeks.
Packaging durability plays a role too, honestly. If your vendor vacuum-sealed the ID and sandwiched it between cardboard inside a plain bubble mailer, it tends to slip through with less scrutiny. Stealth packaging usually means it’s less likely to be flagged for a manual inspection, which is the real source of delays. I’ve seen people panic over tracking showing "Inbound Into Customs" for 15–20 days only to have it pop up a week later with no letter. The key sign of a seizure is a flat-out "seized by customs" update or a physical letter from CBP. As long as you haven’t gotten that, you’re probably in the normal holding pattern.
As for shipping speed, three weeks is actually pretty common if you account for that two-step process — the international leg plus the customs hold. Some vendors manage to clear customs in 3–5 days during non-peak seasons, but during holidays or major sale events, it can easily double. If your tracking hasn’t updated in over two weeks, it might be worth reaching out to the vendor just to confirm they used the right customs form and declaration value. But honestly, I’d give it another week before worrying. Just keep an eye on the tracking for any "release" or "arrival at unit" scan — that’s the light at the end of the tunnel.
