I was thinking of purchasing a year’s service with them…
But how does it work? I’m not really sure about the total…
I’d like to order a few magazines, as the cost of businessweek is frightful OTC in Taiwan… If I were to order it via Amazon, it’d be about $0.90 per copy, but how would the mailing costs be…?
Is it a reliable service, too?
Thanks.
I’ve used US Global Mail for nearly a year now. It’s quite convenient but it’s not cheap either. You get a regular street address (not PO Box) and can receive stuff from any shipper. I have the premium service which is $150/year plus shipping costs. With that service you get an email each time something comes in and then on their web site you can choose how to send stuff over. They can also bundle and repack multiple items for you.
For magazines and letters you can use US Global Priority Mail which allows up to four pounds. You can get 4-10 typical magazines in one shipment depending on their size (or one magazine if it’s a thick woman’s magazine like inStyle… not worth it). They charge a markup on shipping, so each Global Priority envelope will cost $14.50 total with the base fee and bundling/repacking charge. Takes about a week to get to Taiwan.
They also have all the other typical Fedex, DHL, UPS and USPS shipping options for packages but the shipping charges can be quite high. I only use it in the case that I can’t get the vendor to ship directly and it isn’t something available in Taiwan.
Their basic service is cheaper but you have no control of when they ship stuff to you.
For US magazines you can sometimes get subscriptions sent straight to Taiwan for only $10-20 extra per year, but usually they take 1-2 months to get here (yes really). This can be a good option if you don’t mind this amount of delay. It’s not so great for computer magazines though; the information will be completely out of date by then. 