Hope your kit arrives soon! Nothing surprises me about the postal service anymore - I don't know if it's just particularly bad here, or if it's universally terrible, but it's been getting slower and slower the past two years. It's been compounded by the fact that most of the wholesalers we purchase through at work have started using questionable freight companies. The worst case took eight weeks to get a parcel from the supplier to our door, including almost a dozen failed delivery attempts (at the neighbours, or at ours but on days we aren't open/after trading hours). I gave up watching the tracking as it got too depressing!
EDIT: forgot to say, I don't know if ALS is the cheapest place to get the ebony veneer, but I've bought two from them before for Mandolin repairs and they were great