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Ask Slashdot: Package Redirection Service For Shipping to Australia?
An anonymous reader writes "I've recently moved continents, and one of the things I've noticed is the lack of the latest technology, as well as high prices for books and other goods here in Australia. I'm looking at package redirection services from the US, and there's a bewildering array of offerings, at a wide range of prices. What should I look out for? I'm hoping to reduce overall shipping costs to, but obviously worried about costs to deliver mostly empty boxes (yes, I'm talking about you, Amazon), damage to electrical goods from rough handling, packages going missing (does everything have to be registered post or tracked?), import duties (I'm not buying anything that should attract import duty, but still...) and overall costs (I'm not going to be buying frequently, just occasionally). What have other slashdot readers used, and what would they recommend?"
Maybe the dingo ate your baby.
you should be glad to pay the costs of living there
http://www.ozbargain.com.au/wiki/list_of_mail_forwarders
There is also a number of discussions like this one:
http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/74601
Shouldnt you be looking at expat forums?
I certainly don't. Smelly, awful place full of criminals. A blot on England's reputation as an effective empire builder, I say.
I use shipito personally. Back when I used to live in Australia, and now that i'm in New Zealand. Great service.
I picked shipito after doing my research online, you probably should do some research and read up on some reviews and make an informed decision yourself.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
My company has lots of dealer agreements that make it a violation of our contract to send stuff internationally. Occasionally I have certain ones that will NOT let us ship to a freight forwarder. Just be aware that that CAN occur and you're far better off having a family member or a friend ready to ship something for you.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Around $100/year has them receiving your US online purchases at your personal US address (their Florida warehouse). They scan shipment invoices -- you view the invoices in a web interface and tell them which shipments to 'consolidate' and ship, They stuff everything together and ship Fedex or UPS. An 12"x8"x6" box costs about $50-$60 -- you save money when you've consolidated multiple shipments.
In Australia, any import under $1000 is duty free.
As long as you keep the total value of what you are importing under $1000, you don't get hit with GST. If you were to, say, buy a PC overseas that costs over $1000, prepare to get slugged when it comes in through the post. If you have someone send something over, make sure that they price it as $999 on the customs form. I sent myself a computer from overseas and in my honesty/stupidity, priced it over the magic $1000 value and ended up paying about $200 in duties. Actually while you are in Australia, prepare to get slugged everywhere for tech. A high Australian dollar, and the fact that we don't locally produce any tech (we just dig rocks out of the ground and sell them), means that overseas tech companies here charge whatever the small Australian market will bear, and usually they typically price it on the side of unreasonable. Do I really need to talk about how terrible the internet speeds are here? No need to mention that in some places, the best you can get is 2Mbps ADSL? No? OK.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Posting as anonymous because the password reset email ain't coming through.
I've pumped thousands of dollars worth of goods through Shipito's hands. Out of about 75 boxes, they've completely lost one, and another was in limbo for a while when they sent it to the wrong person. Full compensation was offered for the one that was lost.
Their fees can rack up, especially for consolidation, but if you just get Amazon to send individual boxes to their warehouse in Oregon (US tax free), then send to Australia via USPS Airmail without photos or whatever guff, you're really not spending very much per item at all ($2.50 plus postage, and a $50 annual fee). I doubt I'll ever change providers, if they keep it up.
Submitter wants the benefit of living in Australia while not contributing.
Take it w/ an AC-sized grain-of-salt :-), but I've been pretty pleased w/ shipito. I've been a member for about 2 years and had over 50 deliveries sent to their location and consolidated them to about a dozen shipments to me. (My only real complaint is that once you open an account, they never allow the associated email address to be changed.)
Import duties = $0 for packages under AUD $1000 of declared value. There is speculation that this threshold will drop, to increase GST revenue and increase competitiveness of local distributors/retailers. But it has not yet happened, afaik.
As a moderate/occasional on-line shopper, I've never had any go missing en-route to me in Australia - locally or overseas sourced.
And all packages have arrived without shipping damage, including hard disks.
The main problem you seem to face is those US vendors who won't ship outside Australia. Aren't there competitors?
Most people I know here with the same inclination use MyUS (http://www.myus.com/)
For group buying and ex-pat interaction, this (mostly Melbourne-centric) group is good to join: http://www.meetup.com/americans-in-melbourne/
Don't forget to check out the local hackerspaces for (among many other things) group buying and local knowledge. I highly recommend the Melbourne Hackerspace (CCHS - hackmelbourne.org)
Seems awfully silly making something in China, shipping it to the US, and then shipping it back to Australia.
Sent from my PDP-11
Or don't you have a single friend or relative that will do this for you?
If you haven't seen it already, may I introduce you to Whirlpool Forums? It's an excellent resource and I'm sure they'll have some good info on this topic.
I have lived in Aussie for the last 8 years and am grateful every time I leave the doctor's office without having to fill out one stinking form. This is a wonderful country. Support the Australia economy where you can. There are some good online bookstores like Booktopia. If you can't find any joy there, try the Bookdepository and Abesbooks in the UK (owned by Amazon?) They have low shipping costs. There is a large online electronics industry here. Maybe it won't be quite as cheap as buying from the US, but if you have a problem with the order, it won't take months of overseas troubleshooting to figure out. Australian ebay will give you access to the China markets.
Charging a higher price to people in Australia?
That's ANTI-FREE-TRADE!
What kind of import tariffs do they have down there???
If they don't have any tariffs on electronics, just get an American to ship it to you.
No one will mind that if there aren't any tariffs anyway.
Duh!
Dear Slashdot, I'm an idiot and I want to know how to circumvent my local taxes, tariffs, etc.
There's no better place to ask this shit than on a site titled "Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters", so here we are!
I've used Shipito.com -> they consolidate packages and offer good corporate rates on freight. For about $170 I can normally get about 15 items packed and shipped - weighing about 8-12kg with a combined value of less that $1000 to avoid Australian import duties. They have a control panel to control the consolidation process that makes it easy. Have had about 30 boxes shipped without problems. I've had laptops, iphones, electronics, vitamins, clothes, metal detectors, and electronic gear shipped:) You can select the shipping company to reduce the cost, normally I use TNT express with these weights/sizes.
When ordering you put in a unique suite# at one of their US offices. You can choose an Oregon office to avoid local state sales tax eg from amazon.
It takes a while to get the hang of how to optimize the cost given the constraints, but it becomes kind of a fun challenge after a while.
I'm not in Australia (I live in the UK) but I have bought a couple of things from ebay sellers who would only ship to the US in the past few years (sadly this seems to be an increasingly common occurence). I've used Shipito for package forwarding for this and would definitelty recommend them - for my sort of low-volume use they worked out cheapest by quite some margin (as they have a plan where they don't charge you a monthly or annual fee, just a higher fee per shipment) and everything has worked out so far exactly as advertised. Although I've not really had any major issues, I've been in contact with their customer support team a couple of times too and that has been a good experience - they respond to emails/online form submissions pretty quickly.
One other tip - more relevant if you're not using a forwarding service though - I've found it's well worth paying for USPS Express rather than USPS Priority Mail for boxes as it's usually not much more money (often in the region of 5%) and is SIGNIFICANTLY quicker - we're talking a difference of 2-3 WEEKS, at least from the US to the UK and in my experience.
China is a stone throw away, Why are you paying to buy china made items in the US to be shipped to you? Buy from frigging china directly, hell take a weekend boat ride and buy up as much as you can fit in your suitcase!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
First: having a friend forward items to you would likely be the best bet for low volume things or high value things. I find that international flat rate priority mail boxes are wonderful things. They are size limited, but service is good even to New Guinea where I'm ship stuff.
Second... Watch what electronics you buy. In the US we have 60 Cycles 120V and over there it's 50 Cycles 220V. It's not usually a problem, but it can be sometimes. The connectors are generally NOT the same, but adapters abound down there. Also, radio stuff (wifi routers and such) are subject to different rules down under and you might be better off performance wise to use locally distributed stuff. Just be careful out there.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I love my motorbikes, and it is a common complaint in Australia that a dealer cannot go to Honda (or whoever) and buy a motorcycle wholesale from them for cheaper than a US citizen could walk into a US dealership and buy off the showroom floor.
Why is a digital download of Adobe software hundreds of dollars more expensive if the IP address originates in Australia as opposed to the U.S. when there is no extra cost incurred to Adobe for import duties, shopfronts etc?
But the big question for me: How can it be cheaper for a private citizen to pay to import ONE item purchased retail in another country, than retail in their own country that presumably imports in bulk direct from the manufacturer?
Another case in point is badminton racquets. There are pro shops that go to Thailand or Indonesia and buy top notch Yonex racquets retail and then import them, and then sell them from shops that you find typically in Melbourne. These racquets undercut the same model Australian coded racquets by $90-150.
There is something going on and it is not that Australians are payed more, not entirely. It is not the exchange rate, for our dollar is now effectively parity to the US dollar and the pricing is typically the same as it was when it was 65c to the USD (and back then it was said to be the exchange rate). It is partially taxes. I believe that the rest is margins for the importer / manufacturer.
USglobalmail.com mail/freight forwarding. They scan all your mail and you can see the packages online, then click to send it to wherever you want in the the world. Fantastic service- have used it for years.
New Zealand Post has a redirection service that's geared specifically for purchasing in the states and having it shipped to N.Z. cheaper (http://www.nzpost.co.nz/tools/youshop). It goes through a redirection service in Beaverton, Oregon (since Oregon doesn't have a sales tax). I would venture that Australian Post has something like it. If not, you can set it up yourself. I have friends here in Wellington that use the same service in Beaverton to maintain a US address for their business. Shouldn't be hard to do.
I moved from the US to NZ 7 years ago, and also had the need for a mail forwarder. I chose an outfit named "USA2ME", and that worked out pretty well. They charged a monthly fee and forwarded all kinds of mail, envelopes and packages. When the volume of mail dropped to only about 1 envelope a month, I dropped the service as not economical. Now I use my step-daughter's address and she sends things on to me by regular post.
I also use the NZPost's YouShop service when doing online retail shopping in the US. Most places will not ship internationally, you know. YouShop provides a shipping address in Oregon from which they onship to NZ -- for a price.
After moving to NZ, I found the retail scene to be lacking in choice. Eventually, I got over it.
Do check the situation with warranties etc when using consolidators. MyUS buys good on your behalf, i.e. the purchase contract is between the vendor and MyUS. You will not get the original invoice from the vendor, but a MyUS invoice instead. It can make returns and disputes a bit tricky.
I know nothing for about them specifically for Aussielandia, but from my experience with forwarders when I was living in Honduras: First, you might actually want two different forwarders, one who does air service and one who does ship service. Generally, air service for small light things you want fast, and sea service for everything else, usually you're paying a nominal monthly fee, then a per item fee for packages, the per package fee can be quite high for air, and is usually almost a (low) flat rate for sea.
Second, you are almost certainly going to be paying import duties, but the forwarder should take care of all that and roll the price into the price for the package itself.
Third, there's going to be breakage, it should be relatively rare, but it will happen, I had no choices for insurance on the forwarder, you might. It's probably pretty exorbitant, though. When it comes to moving something delicate and expensive your options basically boil down to hand carry it in your carryon when flying back, or go ahead and pay the extra money to buy it there and let the retailer deal with the possible breakage.
Finally, just spitballing here, and I have no idea how practical it might be, but you might want to look to japan for your cutting edge electronics, I've always had the impression that they're more available and cheaper there than almost anywhere else.
I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.
Our government has nothing at all to do with it apart from taking 10%. We didn't vote for price gouging, it's just because there are a small number of distributors so frequently there is a monopoly a product type. As an example, I'm wearing a pair of hiking boots that are made in Italy, cost $125US in Italy and the USA and they were advertised "on special" in Australia for $450 (at close to parity to the $450US then). I was prepared to wait a couple of weeks to save close to $300 once postage was included.
Another example is Apple, where not many years ago even a trip to Hawaii and back plus paying full customs duty was a cheaper way to get a powerbook than buying it in Australia.
The blame lies squarely with the distribution chain and the government has nothing to do with it apart from asking for their 10% for the final sale. What is it you you "guvvamint dis" guvvamint dat" "damn commie weasels" people? You've got a full sized brain - try using it.
I'm an American living in China. I use USGlobalMail. These guys are legitimate and do a good job. They're my personal recommendation, and I won't go into thousands of details you can get from their website directly. Check them out.
--Jim (me)
how Adobe charging more money for their software to Australian customers helps prop up Australia's "socialist wonderland" "welfare state". The price difference is not in government tax or import duties, it just goes into the pocket of Adobe.
https://shoppingmalljapan.com
Tell them what you want to buy from US, Japan or Taiwan, and they'll ship it anywhere in the world.
I have to wonder, did you leave the U.S. because you had no friends?
I moved to Australia 7 years ago and I still have friends back in America. Although I can get a lot more things here now than I used to, I still occasionally have a friend help forward things to me. There's no reason to go with a service, just Paypal them the postage.
Maybe you can send them things they might enjoy too - my friend's wife developed a taste for Tim Tams (cookies) and so we have a regular exchange going, as my Aussie wife misses the "graham crackers" she could get in the U.S. which are unheard-of here...
Perfectly Normal Industries
If you import something for $999 USD today, it would be assessed as a $1,056.25 AUD import.
This would probably attract and additional:
$55 Customs Processing Fee
$50 Import Duty (assuming the standard 2.5% import duties)
$105.63 GST
It needs to be less than $1,000 AUD per shipment.
I have used www.priceusa.com.au to purchase quite a range of items. Clothing, Amazon items, electronics. Never had any issues. They are always fast to respond to inquires. They order the goods, which are delivered to an address in the USA, then shipped to you. A lot of friends use ComGateway to purchase items from Amazon and a few other places.
I've used a Shipito consolidation account for 5 months to send stuff to Brisbane. This is what I learned:
0. I pay $50/year for an account, which gives me an address in California (Suite 123456, 123 Something St., Sometown CA, 90250). When a package arrives for me, they list it on my web based UI with a photo of the package and shipping label.
1. The cheapest freight out to Australia available through Shipito is TNT, but the cost varies from $15/lb for 8lbs, down to $4/lb for 30 lbs.
2. The optimal weight package to consolidate and send off to Australia is 29.5 lbs. Shipito adds a $10 surcharge for heaviness if the package exceeds 30 lbs.
3. It is cheapest to minimise the number of small packages you send in to your Shipito account because they charge $4.50 per piece to consolidate each incoming package into the big box that they send to Australia. Their literature makes it seem like only $2.50, but really it is $4.50 because there is a handling fee and a consolidation fee for each item. So, if you want to order 10 books from Amazon, get them sent to your Shipito box in Caliornia as on shipment of 10 books and you will only have to pay $4.50 handling and consolidation fees. If, however, you let Amazon send you 10 individual packages of 1 book each, Shipito will charge you a total of $45.00 handling and consolidation to put the same 10 books in your big box that goes to Australia.
4. Watch your Shipito account like a hawk. If a package goes missing and you don't tell them within 10 days, too bad. You have no recourse.
5. A package can be delivered to Shipito by Amazon's courier, but Shipito might not ever credit it to your account, in which case you better read #4 again. Until the package is assigned to your account, it hasn't arrived.
6. Their customer service is not aleays good. However, once you have received a reply from a service agent, if you continue to send further enquiries directly to that agent's email address you may get better customer service than if you just use the forum or the general address.
7. Fill out the online customs declerations each time a package arrives. It makes it easier for you to calculate when to close off a consolidation because you can see when the value of all packages is getting close to $1000 or the weight close to 29.5 lbs. You need to send the consolidation before it is worth over $1000 to avoid being charged GST in Australia.
8. They do some annoying things like if you let the package overstay the maximum of 90 days in storage, they just remove it from your a/c without warning and say too bad. So be vigilant about their rules, and don't expect them to be as understanding as some other more mature businesses.
9. If you follow all the above guidelines, Shipito is a good service that will save you considerable amounts on freight, and enable you to buy stuff from US vendors who will only ship to a US address.
Shipito always worked for me in Australia. Need a US phone number (virtual or your friends') though
I've used Stackry to ship some things from the US to me. Everythign went smoothly and their customer service responded to me in a day.
what are you referring to? 2G, 3G, 4G cell phones? High definition television? HD / satellite radio and television? Voice over IP telephone service? 8 core intel computers? NVidia GeForce Titan video cards? Solar-powered heating and air conditioning? Hybrid cars? I'm just asking.
Where did I leave my keys?
Does Billy like me like me, or really like me like me?
-Lod
When looking for books I use this service: http://booko.com.au/
What it does is searches through all the Australian online book shops as well as international shops that send to Australia.
So it finds every store that has the book, converts the currency into Australian dollars and then gives you a list sorted by the cheapest including delivery.
Using that service you don't need to use a specific provider or even a forwarder - it'll just give you the cheapest item per book.
Ok aside from the fact that you are a) lying, b) the biggest idiot to visit the country or c) both and with a massive any public healthcare agenda, why do Americans think that the options are all or nothing?
Yes we have free health care. It's fantastic.
Yes waiting lists are long for elective surgery.
If you have an emergency then you get seen and treated straight away.
If you think you have an emergency then you get seen straight away and treated later if it's elective.
If you don't have an emergency then you have other options. The existence of a public healthcare system didn't abolish the private healthcare system. Many of us have private hospital insurance. Many of us take our elective surgeries to private practices so we get seen faster (nothing to do with the level of care we receive by the way).
If we don't have private medical insurance? Guess what, we can pay for a visit to the clinic just like you freedom to empty your wallet loving Americans can. This is the situation I'm facing at the moment. Get surgery to fix a non-life threatening hernia in 3 months time with the public system, or pay $2500 to get it fixed next week because my cheap-arse medical insurance didn't cover hernias. I'm going for waiting 3 months. Oh and if it strangulates or becomes more serious I get seen straight away anyway in the public system.
I read an article once where someone had won an award for founding a website - can't remember which.
It basically amounted to backpackers taking your stuff on their next flight with the possibility of a reward on the other end. e.g. sending a parcel of warm clothes for winter and having the recipient pick up the traveller from the airport as a thank you. Of course it relies on the trust of said backpacker! :)
e.g. A package by canadian airmail (mostly of sentimental junk) cost me about $CA60 to Australia and took 7 weeks. A traveller flying to Melbourne from Vancouver would have had it delivered in a day and a half.
Anyone know if the site still exists?
I use usabox.com and after living in the US, I have lived in two different countries in different continents and this guy not only deliver fast using DHL, they take pictures of the incoming stuff, so you get an e-mail like interface for your packages. Plus the truly neat thing is that they have a re-packing option where if you allow them, they will open your stuff and repackage it to make it more efficient (especially useful with stuff like MicroSDs).
Setting up the service though was a bit of a hassle so make sure you do that before you go to Australia, since it involves going to a public notary to have a third-party open your mail and stuff like that.
Package forwarding - dont you have good mates in the US that will lie for you on the value statement when they use USPS or DHL to send something to you? Oh, I forgot - you're American, you don't have mates.
There are a number of grey importers in Australia that do all the hard work for you. Kogan.com. Is a perfect example, all Electronics there at USA prices and they deal with all the issues. Just check out Whirlpool forums for a list of others.