Hello Everyone,
Just looking for some advice on a good service that will purchase items in the US on my behalf from eBay or a store say…and ship those items to me. I am most sensitive about shipping costs, and my idea would be to purchase from more than one place and have items shipped to me as one lot.
Any recommendations?
Thank you all
DBR
Hi,
As indicated (in the response above) the goalposts on parcel forwarding have changed or narrowed a lot.
Briefly what you are talking about is a Parcel forwarder with a consolidation service. There were quite a few:
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/wiki/list_of_mail_forwarders
Amazon.com (or other overseas versions of it) as a major site used to have some (where possible) consolidation that you could elect or apply over a single order allowing them to use "best efforts" to send goods from different suppliers as one shipment to your preferred "address"
Independent of that Parcel Forwarders (for a fee) could action certain instructions over incoming parcels.
Immediate redirect was typical, but you could hold items at some selected locations (for a fee) for them to consolidate (on your instruction) with a view to reducing packaging, making everything into one or few parcels, and reducing final leg dispatch to your preferred carrier. You could ramp up to DHL or FedEx or even use USPS (different to UPS) to contain costs with last-mile delivery here by AusPost.
A lot depended on reading what could be safely sent and reading the processes and getting your ID right.
Problems were often Insurance-related and/or lost items or delays but it was either OK or else it went pear-shaped in a special way.
Often it cost more than one would hope, because of fees, insurance, shift between USD$ and $AUD, but you were "in" and had to pay or the goods would go back or be abandoned at your loss.
Where it all went bad was the GST, and the lowered threshold on low-value imported goods.
The meant you would incur additional costs and that the forwarder/consolidator would also collect on behalf of the ATO and over their offshore actions and the storage and consolidation.
Overnight (practically) if broke most of them and few remain because the business model or viability (to Australians) has changed and demand reduced. Thanks Mr Harvey. :+(
The short answer now is to just order what you can via Amazon or eBay where you can get them to send here direct without issue. But I suspect you have items they won't send or other merchants.
Unless the savings (like Black Friday) are huge or what you want simply isn't available here (and will never be) I'd probably forget it and get on with life. Don't forget complex warranty issues (unless Global) and the cost of Returns if required.
I have used this company many times without issue.
They take pictures of the boxes on the scale when they arrive. I have never used the combine service but they offer a combine and repack service if you want as well.
There is a shipping calculator you can use to get a rough idea of postage costs from US to AU based on the item size and weight.
Just be aware postage between US and AU can be expensive.
There’s also ComGateWay
See comments here: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/661827