Shipping to America

[AndyBorrett]

We are expanding our horizons and starting to sell via amazon.com to americao How long approximatley does it take from taking a small packet to the post office to it arriving in the US?

[james233]

Andy I use Fedex when exporting from Ireland to the US as there prices for small parcels seem less than regular post and more reliable. I can send .5Kg for approximately €15.00 (euro). It may be worth looking at, as the you have a proper track and trace etc.
Regards
John A

[Sean Williams]

John makes a good point there - it's about the same cost as Royal Mail.
We find that small packets take about 5 business days to the USA from Wales.
Probably takes half that time from England

[Duncan Rounding]

Small packet deliveries to the US are only slightly more expensive than just down the road. We also find deliveries take about 5 working says with Royal Mail. Similarly for Australia and most of Europe.

[Hendrik]

We ship a lot of packages to the US. I use Air Mail for the lower value packages, as I find it hard to beat their prices. We also give customers the option of International Signed For and Airsure. Delivery times for regular Air Mail can be a week, but sometimes, inexplicably, can be up to 2 weeks.

DHL starts at about £17.50, so not a cheap option. However, as others have pointed out, it is quick and trackable.

I would not want to send more valuable packages, say over £100, by regular Air Mail. We sometimes upgrade these at our own cost, simply so I sleep at night!

Hendrik

[AndyBorrett]

Thanks for all the replies. I was thinking about only offering our less expensive items on amazon.com so we can send everything with the royal mail. We have used the international signed for in the past but I seem to remember there wasn't much in the way of compensation for lost items.

We have been selling on the german amazon for a couple of months now and use airmail for that with no problems so far x

[saucysal]

Customs

I strongly advise that you use Royal Mail for the US to avoid problems/delays/expense of going through Customs in US. The Royal Mail have a special arrangement. You just have to stick a CN 22 label on each parcel, doesn't take long to complete and is free. We have no known case of our US customers having to pay any duty on arrival. I recommend sending Royal Mail Airsure so that it is trackable (no signature required). If you use a carrier other than the Royal Mail you will need to supply multiple copies of the invoice on the outside of the parcel, have commodity codes, etc, pay extra to the carrier for them to get it through Customs for you, possible long delays through Customs, and possible rejection, and the recipient is likely to have to pay import duty and taxes to receive the parcel. With Royal Mail small packets there is a maximum weight of 2kg per packet, so sometimes orders have to be sent in multiple packets, and there is a size limit.

Sarah

[AndyBorrett]

We have been using the royal mail for the past month or so with no problems apart from the odd late delivery.

[kipper]

For my international orders I use P4D who have proved time and time again to be ultra reliable even to singapore in 4 days.

[Sean Williams]

Mike, do you know which carrier they use for their branded European stuff?

[kipper]

The cheaper option usually comes out as Fedex followed by DHL. If you go straight to the carrier you wil find the charges are at least double so P4D must have a massive discount

[Sean Williams]

Carriers are weird.
We have a UPS account, but we can obtain better non-UK rates via Interparcel (or P4D).
I keep telling them they're losing money by paying the agent commission which they could keep for themselves if they gave us better rates; but to no avail.
"Not our policy". Wot, not your policy to increase your profits?