My mail and packages forwarded from home (USA)

Taiwan Where Can I Find...?
1

I’ve been using bongous.com . They are more for packages than mail. You get your own address (their address, just "suite number such-and-such) in Connecticut. They unpack, inventory, and weigh everything you receive. Then when you are ready you pick some or all of your stuff, and they consolidate it into one shipment. They try to fit it together so you don’t get hit with volume-weight fees. They only ship out using DHL Express (Air). But because they do a massive volume with DHL, they get a big kickback from DHL. And they pass this on to you, with like 50% off on the DHL rack rate. Plus the consolidation is a saving. Anyway they explain it and calculate sample rates if you go to their website. They have 2 different levels of service, one is $15/mo (3 month minimum) and includes consolidation, the other is like $5 per shipment but no consolidation so you might end up with a bunch of shipments and less of a kickback kickback. One advantage of a CT address is I believe no US sales tax in that state. And also international shipping seems to me the same price no matter what state it originates from.

There is also usglobalmail.com/ if you have used them please add to this thread. I think there are other such services in USA and other countries. US global mail is in Texas, so you might get some sales tax. Though if you ship from Amazon you won’t, its just that larger businesses that have an office in Texas will have to charge you TX sales tax. This place offers more outbound shipping options than just DHL. Like, they offer USPS Global Priority Mail, like $16 for up to 4# to Taiwain IIRC. So that would be a lot cheaper than DHL. And FedEx might be cheaper than DHL, though they don’t deliver to every city in Taiwan, anyway check the rate calculator.

I shipped a package or two on my own from a friend’s house before I discovered these. Its a huge nightmare of paperwork, and then at the end you will pay the full rack rate from DHL or Fedex, so buy some vaseline too. Also, as far as customs here goes, what I hear is, for packages with over $300 declared value, they just pick them at random and sometimes you get hit with duty of like 5%. Or maybe more, depends on what’s inside, in fact, you might check, there are many things that are prohibited, e.g. projectors made in china, etc.

2

I’ve used usglobalmail.com/ for a few years now. They have a basic service at $10/month or $100/year where you set up your shipping preferences and they reship automatically. Their high end service is $15/month or $150/year and you have complete control over how and when to ship each individual item. For letters, magazines and documents the flat rate priority mail service is $16.50 for up to 4 pounds and usually takes about one week to Taiwan.

My experience is that items shipped by express services (Fedex, DHL, UPS) always have customs duties assessed while those by USPS First Class or Priority never do. Also USPS service is a lot cheaper if you don’t mind not having a tracking number and waiting longer.

I usually just use it for mail and magazines but they did help me get a Kindle 2 recently.

3

Article comparing 5 forwarders wowebook.com/shopping/intern … anies.html

4

I’m a little less high on Bongo since they refused to repack my recent shipment, and now I’m having a hassle with customs. But there is something interesting about these re-shippers. Namely, that shipping rates are a scam of national and international proportion. What happens is, UPS, DHL, etc. all get their shippers to charge you the “standard” (read artificially inflated) rack rate. So people start to think “Oh, of course it costs $12 to ship this package in the USA… everyone charges the same shipping fee… of course it costs $400 to ship this 40# box to Taiwan… everyone charges the same shipping fee”. But what happens is, UPS, DHL, etc. kick back more than 50% of that shipping charge to the shipper. That’s how a lot of these online stores make their money, off the shipping fee. The evidence of these kickbacks is that Bongo, and some of the others in the article, are able to give us 50% off on shipping: they kick back the kickback to the consumer. Having said all that, Customs here is too much of a crap shoot for me to do much more of this. I mean, you pay extra for fast air shipping… then it sits in Customs for a few extra days… you simply can’t know how much time or money a package will take.