Freight Forwarding Company?

[DubSteve]

Hi Guys,

Anyone know of any freight forwarding company from the US I can use?

Time at the moment has eluded me so this is why I am posting here.

Cheers

Steve

[gareth_oau]

www.hopshopgo.com FTW

[DubSteve]

I tried them but how do you get something from a supplier to there destination I couldnt see it on there website

[gareth_oau]

once you sign up with HSG they will give you your own personal address there.

When you buy your goods, you give the seller the dubsteve address at HSG

[Buller_Scott]

man that's a pretty nifty system.

i'll have no choice but to use these guys from now on, given that friggin backcountry wont ship my brand of snowboard overseas anymore (neversummer, and its either HSG or driving to jindabyne just to buy one from cherri cherri pow pow).

[gareth_oau]

Jeese Scott, I was in Jindy a week ago, I could have picked one up for you!

[DubSteve]

once you sign up with HSG they will give you your own personal address there.

When you buy your goods, you give the seller the dubsteve address at HSG

then does HSG know where to send them to or do you have to tell them?

[Preen59]

Try myUS.com.

Greg Roles reckons they're pretty good.

I mainly ship from INA in Canada, so i'm not much help.

[gareth_oau]

Steve, the process is:

you register with HSG, advise your home address etc.
They give you a unique address to get your goods sent to.
You then go shopping wherever you want to.
Tell the seller the HSG address, and Seller sends goods there.
Once HSG receives them, they email you with a shipping quote.
you pay HSG (via paypal)
They send you the goods.

you can also have multiple sellers send their goods to you and HSG will hold them until they all arrive, then pack them in one box for you and save on shipping costs.

also, if the Seller wont sell to you (you dont have an american credit card for example), then you instruct HSG the details and they will go and buy it for you as well as ship it

[Buller_Scott]

that's awesome, gareth. bookmarked! (hsg, that is).

as for the board - i dont need a new one for a while, hehe. either way, going off to perisher for a few days with the old man... hopefully the kickers are still hittable (i'd like to get footage of myself).

[Ben J]

I recently used http://www.shipito.com/ , basically the same the same as how someone described HSG and they were great, very fast, sent clear photos of everything and saved me hundreds. I had packages from 5 different places combined into one carefully packed small package, the same size as some of the individual packages I would have had sent over. They have a good shipping calculator on there too to see how much you're likely to spend. Their fee's are pretty small for what they do too, and they have massive discounts with some of the shipping companies (I had my parcel come from the US to my address in regional queensland in 2 business days (yes, 2!! thats quicker then I get things from in Australia), and it cost less then the standard USPS quote which would have taken a couple weeks).

I'll go with them again for sure.

[gareth_oau]

sortof,, but some of the US brands have agency agreements with distributors in Oz, and the US retailers are not permitted to export those brands to Oz, hence the need for freight-forwarders.

I've used shipito in the past and their service was good, but I had to stop using them because the retailers would recognise that shipitto was an agent and then refuse to ship to them.

Fortunately my address at HSG is more discrete and I seem to be getting away with it (but I suspect its only a metter of time)

[Ben J]

Fair enough, the reason I used them was cause a couple of the companies I bought from wouldn't ship out of the US as well (the savings were more of a bonus I realised after looking into it), but they had no problem sending them to my shipito address, which was just like C/o Eastbiz corp, Suite #***** ***W 140th street Torrance CA or something, but if certain companies are wising up to that then I suppose thats a problem. They also do assisted purchases for a couple dollars if the company will only take American cards or something, and will even go into shops in person if they have real shops in the right area.

I'm sure these companies that aren't allowed to sell out of the US will figure it all out over time, but then again parcel forwarding companies may get sneakier aswell and it will probably keep going in a cycle like that for a while until its almost impossible to distinguish one of these parcel forwarding addreses to a legit US customer.