Delay notices from iTaoBuy, grouped by cause

iTaoBuy keeps one public notice list with two streams, promotions and logistics announcements. On 16 October 2026 it held 86 entries. We read all of them and kept the 28 that change how long a parcel takes or say something about paying for a delay. They are grouped below by cause, not by date, because the cause is what the exclusion clauses talk about.

Each entry shows the date iTaoBuy posted it, the window it describes and one sentence in iTaoBuy’s own words. Some notices are signed with a different date from the one the list shows (the Labour Day notice is signed 2025 but was posted in April 2026); we use the posted date. The originals are on the iTaoBuy notice list.

Grouping by cause also shows a pattern. Holiday notices are planned and give dates; airport and weather notices arrive after the event and rarely give a figure; capacity notices have a start and no end. Only one notice, about February 2026, says what buyers would receive. For a buyer waiting on a parcel, the planned notices are the useful ones: they tell you which days nothing ships.

Super Typhoon Ragasa is the one weather notice with a number attached: parcels with an estimated shipping date from 22 to 25 September 2025 were expected to take 2 to 3 working days longer, and domestic returns paused until 27 September.

The September 2026 typhoon notice points at Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shanghai and gives 3 to 5 days for parcels to and from those areas, which is mostly the domestic leg before your parcel ships. The December 2025 USPS notice lists thirteen states hit by snow and allows up to 3 to 5 business days in remote areas, plus post office closures on 25 December and 1 January.

Weather is where the exclusion texts disagree in wording: the table says natural disasters, the claims rules say severe weather. See the exclusion wording page.

Holiday notices are the most common kind and the most practical. Most of them affect the days before a parcel ships, so they do not add to the delay count, but they decide when day 0 is. Typical lines: packages submitted after 17:00 on 31 December 2025 would ship from 2 January; during Labour Day 2026 the carrier was closed from 1 to 3 May and backlog shipped from 4 May; around Dragon Boat Festival the carriers paused from 19 to 21 June.

One pair contradicts itself. On 23 September 2026 iTaoBuy said the warehouse would close from 1 to 3 October and that parcels submitted after 17:00 on 29 September would ship on 5 October. On 26 September it posted a service update for 1 to 7 October: “No delays. No interruptions. Everything runs as usual.” The later notice is the one to follow, but both are still in the list.

Planning around these is simple once you know the pattern. The warehouse usually announces a last submission time, often 17:00 Beijing time the day before the break, and a first dispatch day after it. A parcel submitted an hour late can wait four or five days for day 0, and none of that wait counts toward the delay lines.

The notice of 18 March 2026 is the only one in the list that offers anything. It apologises for February parcels delayed by flight cancellations over the Spring Festival “and other uncontrollable external factors”, notes that a few took more than 25 days, and asks affected buyers to contact customer service once the parcel is finally delivered. After checking, iTaoBuy would issue a special coupon to offset shipping on the next parcel.

Two details are worth noticing. The cause is described as uncontrollable, yet a coupon was offered anyway. And the contact line in the published text is an unfilled template slot where an email address or chat link was meant to go; online chat is the channel that exists.