Everyone who rings Belgian doorbells. bpost carries the lion's share of the country's packages and we follow it scan by scan — alongside PostNL, which delivers a huge slice of Flanders and the Dutch-webshop flow, DPD and GLS on the e-commerce routes, DHL and UPS for express and German-shop orders, Mondial Relay for the pickup-point deliveries Vinted made famous, and FedEx rounding out the lineup. Your bol.com order riding PostNL, your Zalando package with bpost, your Vinted find at a Mondial Relay point and your Amazon.de delivery with DHL all land in one timeline here. In total we track more than 1,000 carriers worldwide, recognising each number's format automatically — and when an international package switches carriers at the border, we follow it straight through the handover, new number and all.

Usually yes — and each carrier gives you its own steering wheel. bpost's My bpost app lets you redirect to a pickup point or locker, name a preferred neighbour, choose a safe place or shift the delivery day — set once, and future bpost deliveries follow your rules. PostNL's app offers the same moves for its Belgian deliveries: another PostNL point, a neighbour, a different day. DPD lets you reroute to a Pickup shop or change the date through the link in its delivery message; DHL and GLS run similar options via their notification emails. Mondial Relay is the exception that proves the rule — you chose the point at checkout, and that's where it lands. The honest caveats everywhere: the sender's service level decides which options exist, and international packages become steerable only after clearing customs. So watch your timeline here — the first Belgian domestic scan tells you which carrier has the baton, and that's whose app to open.

An inspection hold means customs wants a closer look — and in the vast majority of cases it ends with your package continuing on its way. FOD Financiën picks packages for checks when a declaration looks incomplete, a value seems too low for the contents, or the item category needs verification (think electronics, food supplements, branded goods); some checks are simply random. This can happen whichever carrier is transporting — bpost, PostNL, DPD or an express courier — and during the hold there's usually nothing for you to do. If customs needs a document, your purchase invoice or proof of payment, the carrier relays the request, and answering fast is the single best thing you can do for your delivery date. Inspections add days, occasionally longer. What helps for next time: buy from shops that declare honestly and attach invoices — accurate paperwork is exactly what keeps packages out of the inspection queue.

Good news first: genuine gifts get friendlier treatment than purchases, whichever carrier brings them. A gift sent by one private person to another, worth up to €45, enters Belgium free of VAT and duty — and the postal clearance fee falls away with it (bpost charges nothing on exempt gifts, and the other carriers follow the same customs logic). The conditions matter, though: it must truly be person-to-person, occasional, and the sender should mark it clearly as a gift on the customs form with an honest value — alcohol, perfume and tobacco follow stricter rules. Above €45, the package is treated like a normal import: 21% VAT on the value plus the handling fee of whichever carrier clears it. So tell your family abroad: fill in the customs declaration carefully, write "gift" and the real value, and keep it under €45 where possible. A well-labelled box from home arrives faster and free.

That silence after the arrival scan is the customs-and-handover stretch, and it's the most normal pause in international tracking — wherever your package entered. Postal packages queue at the Brucargo zone by Brussels Airport before joining bpost's network; a huge share of e-commerce from Asia actually lands at Liège, one of Europe's biggest air-cargo hubs, before fanning out with PostNL, DPD or GLS; and road freight from EU webshops pauses at the carriers' sorting hubs on its way in. None of those steps reliably produce public scans, so the timeline holds still while the real work happens backstage. Delivery usually takes a couple of days, but high-volume seasons may extend the timeframe. Two things worth doing while you wait: check your email for a VAT payment request (the classic silent blocker, from any carrier), and see whether a new local tracking number has appeared on your order page — the story often continues under it, and we'll link the two.

Start with the delivery details, because each carrier leaves its own trail. bpost's and PostNL's apps show where the handover happened — a safe place, a neighbour, a pickup point — and DPD and GLS usually attach a proof-of-delivery photo showing the exact doorstep. Mondial Relay's "delivered" often means delivered to the pickup point, waiting for you with a code. So: read the scan detail, check the photo if there is one, ask the household and the neighbours your street's drivers favour, and look at any sheltered spot. Scans occasionally register a little ahead of the actual delivery van, so it's worth waiting until evening. Nothing delivered by the next day? File a report with the carrier via its app or site (they can pull the GPS of the delivery scan), and inform the seller, who under EU rules is responsible for the order reaching you — refund, replacement or investigation. The timeline gives you the precise scan time to mention to both of them.

Two separate charges are hiding in that bill, and they apply whichever carrier delivers. The first is Belgian VAT — 21% — which every order from outside the EU owes from the first cent, plus the EU's flat €3 duty per item on low-value e-commerce packages since July 2026. The second is the clearance fee: whoever walks your package through customs charges for the paperwork, and each carrier has its own tariff — bpost charges €21.50 for packages up to €150 and €40 above that, PostNL applies its own handling costs, and express couriers like DHL and UPS bill clearance or advance fees that can run higher still. That fee is the avoidable part: shops registered for IOSS collect the VAT at checkout, and the package clears with no fee at all, whoever carries it. So before buying from a non-EU site, check for a VAT line at checkout — that one line decides whether your €30 order stays a €30 order.

Same package, two very different arrivals — and the rule holds whether bpost, PostNL, DPD or DHL does the delivering. With IOSS, the shop collects your 21% Belgian VAT at checkout and the package travels with an electronic "tax paid" tag: customs waves it through, no carrier adds a clearance fee, and delivery continues without a pause. Without IOSS, the package stops at the border: VAT gets assessed on arrival, you receive a payment request from whichever carrier is handling it — bpost by email or app, the couriers through their own channels — and their clearance fee lands on top, easily rivalling the tax itself on a small order. The delivery also loses days waiting for your payment. Practically: Amazon, AliExpress and Temu run IOSS as standard; smaller independent shops sometimes don't. A non-EU checkout with no VAT line means "the bill comes later, with a fee on top" — shop accordingly.

It means your package landed in Belgium and is going through customs processing — a routine checkpoint, not a problem. You'll see the same stage under different names depending on who's carrying: bpost and PostNL show "douaneafhandeling" or "bij de douane", DPD and DHL write "customs clearance in progress". Whatever the wording, the same things are happening backstage: the import declaration gets filed, customs can verify the declared value or contents, and any VAT owed gets calculated. Most packages move through within days without you doing anything. If a payment or document is needed, the carrier contacts you — typically by email with a payment link — and the package waits until that's settled. Two tips: make sure the seller declares the contents honestly with an invoice attached, and handle any payment request the same day, because storage time works against you. Once cleared, the familiar domestic scans resume quickly.

For bpost, the notice in your letterbox or the My bpost app names the exact spot: a post office, a Post Point inside a local shop, or a parcel locker you can open any hour — bring your ID and the barcode, and collection takes a minute. The other carriers each have their own fallback, always named in their tracking: PostNL reroutes to a PostNL point (often a supermarket counter), DPD and GLS send packages to their Pickup shops, DHL to a ServicePoint, and Mondial Relay deliveries simply wait at the point relais you chose at checkout. Some carriers also deliver to a neighbour if you've allowed it — the notice says who. The universal rule across all of them: pickup locations hold packages for a limited window before starting the return to sender, so check the notice or app for your deadline and treat the collection as a this-week errand rather than a someday one.

You may also want to explore tracking for these other destinations:

• Waiting on something from France?

• Keep an eye on Germany deliveries

• Tracking made easy for Netherlands

• See deliveries to and from Austria

• Where's your Switzerland parcel?

• Follow your shipment in Italy

These carrier pages are worth a look too:

• Following a DPD delivery?

• DHL Express tracking, step by step

• See where your Landmark Global package is

• Got a UPS number? Start here

• Check your FedEx shipment

• Hermesworld updates in one place