I am pissed, angry, frustrated. There has to be a good alternative to simple boat mail. I don’t want to dropship, rent a container or do any of these things that come up. I want what I had and enjoyed. I want my friends and family to think of me when they visit a garage sale, antique show or book sale. Pick up a few gifts and throw them into a box and send them to me. When my kids were young I actually had to insist that my parents stop buying the kids presents as the shipping costs three to five times what the object they sent me cost. Fortunately, most mainstream products I can order through local businesses with warehouses in the states. Bookman Books give me the normal discount for all products in print except a few.
So that’s it. I want people to be able to buy me and the kids one of a kind knickknacks on impulse and send them to me… the cheapest and slowest way possible and not go broke. I was able to do this. I enjoyed a lot of stuff. Now I can’t all due to one stupid man. O F***ing Bummer put out a lot of people and charities that used to rely on boat mail.
Ground shipping tends to be quite cheap, but you’ll have to wait a month or two for your stuff to arrive.
Way back, the USPS used to offer shipping by book weight. Do they not do that anymore? IJA
Ground shipping won’t work. They run out of road at the cost. I used to use surface mail that took care of the problem but the US Postal service dropped out of the outbound service.
I simply don’t know of any boat services out of the US. Everything is USPS/Fedex/UPS and they are all quite expensive. I do not know how some sellers (like iherb) offer cheap shipping, perhaps they have deals with companies?
With all the containers going to the US they have to go back somehow, and that would mean cheap shipping from the US back to China. Maybe check some of the Asian markets and see if they have remittance services…
Also they have luggage sharing services such as “Send my bags” which people use their available free luggage allowance to take stuff to another country. Cost is around 100 dollars to send 30kg of stuff.
They are full to the brim with dollar bills, how do you think they pay for all the iPhone cables on eBay. 
I miss ground/sea shipping too, especially for books. If you lived in the Philippines you could ship anything to there by sea (but not from there). One thing you can do is to work with a shipping broker which can find the shipping companies with extra space and negotiate prices for the cheapest price for ground or air. It requires shipping large packages, but you can let things pile up.
Customs and handling fees will cost more than the actual shipping.
Ugggg…
Before I could ship a copy paper box full of junk that I called treasure.
Look, I’ve been here for twenty plus years. I’ve given up a lot.
I still have a few friends back home whom I went flea marketing with. Hey seeker, I found this xyz and thought of you. Really cheap. Oh, ten us dollars to buy 40 to send to you…
Maybe Canada has boat mail…Hmmm.
Forget it. Shipping stuff out of Canada is a lost cause. Ground shipping within the country will kill you.
I’m talking knicknaks here. Old 45 rpm records, books, period toys, an old rotary that still can work in Taiwan (we share the same system) and stuff like that on impulse. Under boat mail it was affordable.
There is still book rate and Mbag for books and media which is cheaper than regular airmail but, it’s still airmail and the discount is small.
I miss the days of loading up a box of books, DVDs and magazines in the states and have the mailman come balancing the huge box on his motorcycle 3 months later. Now I’ll just be satisfied with a small carton.
Try PayPal shipping
Yeah, that’s another example of it ain’t broke…
I had a US and a Taiwan PayPal account. I was happily managing my US bank accounts and sending a littlemoney back and forth. Then I couldn’t transfer money. Then couldn’t log in.
Talked with the manager, proved my identity and the manager tried to reverse it. The “system” overrid him and and said I was fraud. Once I got access, all I could do was cancel my credit cards and return the money to the bank.
Theoretically, o shouldn’t be the only foreigner bummed out about lack of affordable shipping.
Guess most of your are too young to know any that there was and still is affordability shipping to the world except the us.
What ever solution I come up with, it has to be easy. I’m asking for gifts. It’s cheap and easy to send little things from Taiwan. I used surface mail a few years ago to send a friend Chinese elementary school text books the schools digarded.
Do they not treat personal items differently than purchases? A bunch of old stuff from a garage sale looks like your own property.
You can still ship book rate, but it must be books only. Either the post office or Customs may open the package. If it does not contain books, you will either pay a higher price or have the package returned to you.
Thanks. Good to know.