Shopping online in the US and shipping to Thailand

[ninjapro2]

Hi, what services do you use when shopping in the US online shops and want it to send you to Thailand? Because some online shops don't ship internationally

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

For packages as opposed to letter mail -- Shipito.com Economy Airmail service. Averages about $12 per pound to send US to Thailand.

 

[observer90210]

4 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

For packages as opposed to letter mail -- Shipito.com Economy Airmail service. Averages about $12 per pound to send US to Thailand.

 

No issues with the parcels being held up by Thai Customs charging exorbitant duty rates or claiming extra invoicing/documentation?

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

In my experience, the Thai Customs problems generally arise in two different situations:

 

--You use DHL or FedEx to handle the shipment, and it's generally going to get charged a duty, a shipping and an insurance fee, and depending on the items, those can sometimes get quite high.

 

--You send a package with a high declared value or some kind of prohibited contents, and then problems are likely to result.

 

With Shipito's Economy Airmail, the packages are all delivered locally by Thai Post, not FedEx or DHL, so they don't go thru the latter's Customs processing. And, as long as you keep the total value of a single package under about $40 U.S., using Shipito Economy Airmail, it's likely to have no fees at all on the receiving end, or at most, a 7 baht Thai Post small package handling fee.

 

[pgrahmm]

1 hour ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

In my experience, the Thai Customs problems generally arise in two different situations:

 

--You use DHL or FedEx to handle the shipment, and it's generally going to get charged a duty, a shipping and an insurance fee, and depending on the items, those can sometimes get quite high.

 

--You send a package with a high declared value or some kind of prohibited contents, and then problems are likely to result.

 

With Shipito's Economy Airmail, the packages are all delivered locally by Thai Post, not FedEx or DHL, so they don't go thru the latter's Customs processing. And, as long as you keep the total value of a single package under about $40 U.S., using Shipito Economy Airmail, it's likely to have no fees at all on the receiving end, or at most, a 7 baht Thai Post small package handling fee.

 

Interested - I have something I would like to get.....Do they let you declare the value yourself or do they declare the value for shipping?

 

I was thinking of using MyUS Shipping....Seems to tick more boxes on side by side comparisons....

Edited July 5, 2017 by pgrahmm

[Langsuan Man]

8 hours ago, pgrahmm said:

Interested - I have something I would like to get.....Do they let you declare the value yourself or do they declare the value for shipping?

Shipito forces you  to do the customs declaration  as part of the checkout process when you choose your shipping method 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

14 hours ago, Langsuan Man said:

Shipito forces you  to do the customs declaration  as part of the checkout process when you choose your shipping method 

 

Not sure what you mean by saying "forces" in this context.   To send a package internationally, someone has to fill out the customs info.

 

With Shipito, you're prompted to fill out whatever value declarations you want when placing a shipping order. But if for some reason you don't want to fill out that info yourself, AFAIR, you can pay them a small extra fee and they'll open the package and fill out the customs info for you, using the receipt(s) inside.  Why anyone would want them to do that, instead of simply doing it yourself online, I can't quite figure.

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

23 hours ago, pgrahmm said:

Interested - I have something I would like to get.....Do they let you declare the value yourself or do they declare the value for shipping?

 

I was thinking of using MyUS Shipping....Seems to tick more boxes on side by side comparisons....

 I haven't used them. But in my experience, it comes down to two main things:

 

--avoiding FedEx and DHL shipping methods so as to avoid their Thai Customs ripoffs, and instead using a service that ends up arriving via Thai Post. (A lot of the U.S. shippers like using FedEx or DHL, probably because of their tracking, but also I'm sure they make more money).

 

--For whatever non FexEx or non-DHL shipping method the company is offering, what's the price per pound of shipment going to be?  And then compare. As I said above, right now, Shipito's Airmail Economy to Thailand works out to about $12 per pound of contents all-inclusive.

 

Just as a footnote on that, you also have to be careful about package re-shippers who bill you on what's called DIM (dimensional) weight vs. the actual weight of packages. With DIM weight, if you have a 1 oz USB stick and it's shipped in a medium size box, they're going to charge you a price based on the HxWxL size of the box, which is going to be higher. With actual weight shipping, they're going to charge you based on the weight of your 1 oz USB stick plus the actual added weight of the box, which usually is going to be far less.

 

Shipito does actual weight billing, not DIM weight billing, though in the past year or so, they've switched to rounding the weight to the nearest half pound pricing, AFAIR. So a 1.3 pound package would get charged at the 1.5 pound rate. Obviously, I don't like that change, but I haven't seen anything better as yet than their $12 per pound Airmail Economy service.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Just to elaborate a bit, with words of warning:

 

When I was new here, I had started using a shipping service that used FedEx and DHL, and I figured, that's great, reliable companies, tracking etc.

 

So then, over a period of a couple months, I did an order of some regular clothing and then a separate order of some shoes. And to my shock, with FedEx and especially DHL, the assessed charges on arrival -- beyond what I had already paid for the shipping itself -- ended up being almost as much as the total value of the package contents. I'm talking $50 to almost $100 U.S. extra in charges for duty, tax, insurance, etc.

 

I remember one of the packages got assessed with a 60% duty, plus 7% VAT, plus handling, insurance, etc. Thai customs duties thru FedEx and DHL seem to be especially bad/high when it comes to clothing and shoes items, presumably to protect their local industries. On the other hand, through FedEx, small electronics often seem to only draw a 7% VAT charge. But as I said, with Airmail Economy, typically I pay no VAT or duty on arrival and the shipping rates themselves are lower.

 

[pgrahmm]

1 hour ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 I haven't used them. But in my experience, it comes down to two main things:

 

--avoiding FedEx and DHL shipping methods so as to avoid their Thai Customs ripoffs, and instead using a service that ends up arriving via Thai Post. (A lot of the U.S. shippers like using FedEx or DHL, probably because of their tracking, but also I'm sure they make more money).

 

--For whatever non FexEx or non-DHL shipping method the company is offering, what's the price per pound of shipment going to be?  And then compare. As I said above, right now, Shipito's Airmail Economy to Thailand works out to about $12 per pound of contents all-inclusive.

 

Just as a footnote on that, you also have to be careful about package re-shippers who bill you on what's called DIM (dimensional) weight vs. the actual weight of packages. With DIM weight, if you have a 1 oz USB stick and it's shipped in a medium size box, they're going to charge you a price based on the HxWxL size of the box, which is going to be higher. With actual weight shipping, they're going to charge you based on the weight of your 1 oz USB stick plus the actual added weight of the box, which usually is going to be far less.

 

Shipito does actual weight billing, not DIM weight billing, though in the past year or so, they've switched to rounding the weight to the nearest half pound pricing, AFAIR. So a 1.3 pound package would get charged at the 1.5 pound rate. Obviously, I don't like that change, but I haven't seen anything better as yet than their $12 per pound Airmail Economy service.

Ouch - what I'm thinking obout weighs around 30#+....

[DineshR]

I've done online shopping via Amazon and they ship directly to you and take care of shipping and duties. They estimate duties first which you pay and in case the duties are lower, they refund the difference. I've also bought stuff at other online places and had them delivered to my mail forwarder and I then use USPS priority mail to ship it to me. More expensive than shipitto... but I want to ensure what I have ordered reaches me quickly. Now that I know if shipitto, I'll try that sometime as well


Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect

[NanLaew]

Note that recently amazon in the US has been using their own Amazon Logistics  (AMZL) delivery service which typically does not have tracking information. I ordered some stuff for a domestic US delivery last February (buddy would hand carry to LOS) and when I was looking for information on AMZL consignments, it said it could be delivered by their own people or third parties including USPS, UPS and FedEx. Maybe AMZL is more refined these days with trackable shipments but I would be upset if they had opted to use either DHL or FedEx for something coming direct to Thailand and I ended up getting my wallet raped by Customs.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

45 minutes ago, DineshR said:

I've done online shopping via Amazon and they ship directly to you and take care of shipping and duties. They estimate duties first which you pay and in case the duties are lower, they refund the difference. I've also bought stuff at other online places and had them delivered to my mail forwarder and I then use USPS priority mail to ship it to me. More expensive than shipitto... but I want to ensure what I have ordered reaches me quickly. Now that I know if shipitto, I'll try that sometime as well
 

 

I've priced different packages in the past, comparing Shipito's Economy Airmail with Amazon's own international shipping rates to Thailand. In the past, Amazon used to use DHL a lot. I haven't priced them lately.

 

In every case I sampled, the Amazon shipping for regular packages (I didn't ck books or CDs) was considerably higher than Shipito Economy Airmail just based on shipping fees alone. And then, of course, the difference got even larger when adding in Amazon's charges for Thai duty, tax, etc.

 

Over the years, I've shipped a lot of packages from the U.S. to Thailand. And I've never yet found Amazon's own shipping pricing to be better than what I could arrange on my own.

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

24 minutes ago, NanLaew said:

Note that recently amazon in the US has been using their own Amazon Logistics  (AMZL) delivery service which typically does not have tracking information.

Do you mean for their domestic or their international shipments?

 

I've had some problems with domestic shipments that were nominally handled by Amazon Logistics, but apparently, at some point were handed off to the USPS for actual end-site delivery. And Amazon had no tracking info available when the package went astray. (Although, Amazon being Amazon, fortunately, they ordered and delivered another of the disappeared item at their expense. Kudos for their customer service). But again, that was for a domestic shipment.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

28 minutes ago, NanLaew said:

Maybe AMZL is more refined these days with trackable shipments but I would be upset if they had opted to use either DHL or FedEx for something coming direct to Thailand and I ended up getting my wallet raped by Customs.

 

Ditto on that!!!!  Been there done that. It didn't feel good!!!!

[NanLaew]

5 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

Do you mean for their domestic or their international shipments?

 

I've had some problems with domestic shipments that were nominally handled by Amazon Logistics, but apparently, at some point were handed off to the USPS for actual end-site delivery. And Amazon had no tracking info available when the package went astray. (Although, Amazon being Amazon, fortunately, they ordered and delivered another of the disappeared item at their expense. Kudos for their customer service). But again, that was for a domestic shipment.

As I said, this was a domestic order. Your experience mirrors mine with no tracking information available on AMZL consignments.

 

However, you do not know if amazon will use AMZL or one of the regular shipping methods at the time of purchase. I am not sure if AMZL handles end-to-end international shipments at this time but I doubt it. Chances are they will go direct to UPS, DHL and FedEx?

Edited July 6, 2017 by NanLaew

[tomwct]

I'm not sure what your shopping for, but we use aliexpress.com. Everything we buy comes from China. Never a problem and we never pay any tax or duties. Check it out! I just bought a replacement key for my Toyota. The dealer wanted 2200 THB, I paid $1.78 US.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

1 hour ago, pgrahmm said:

Ouch - what I'm thinking obout weighs around 30#+....

 

If you mean 30+ pounds, that's likely to be expensive, so matter how you go... It's just going to be a matter of how expensive.

 

Shipito has an online calculator on their website that you can use to see their pricing and delivery options based on weight, package dimensions and destination and postal code.  Also, as you might expect, different shipping methods have different maximum numbers for package dimensions and total weight. For example, I don't think the Thai Post guys on their motorcycles typically deliver 30 pound packages.

 

The Shipito Economy Airmail service I've mentioned above has, I believe, a 4 lbs per package maximum weight. I usually try to stay within that, even if it means dividing up things into smaller or separate orders. That gets their most economical shipping rate, and it also tends to avoid issues on the Thai end where packages valued at more than $40 or so, even if handled by Thai Post, are more likely to get some tax and/or duty assessment (even though usually much much less than if you went via the DHL/FedEx route).

 

https://www.shipito.com/en/shipping-calculator?countrycode=US

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

5 minutes ago, NanLaew said:

I am not sure if AMZL handles end-to-end international shipments at this time but I doubt it. Chances are they will go direct to UPS, DHL and FedEx?

AFAIK, Amazon is still using the private courier services for their international shipments, and charging corresponding shipping prices.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

9 minutes ago, tomwct said:

I'm not sure what your shopping for, but we use aliexpress.com. Everything we buy comes from China. Never a problem and we never pay any tax or duties. Check it out! I just bought a replacement key for my Toyota. The dealer wanted 2200 THB, I paid $1.78 US.

 

There are three main categories of things I tend to shop online for:

--non-prescription drug store type stuff that I can't get here or is way overpriced or of undeterminable quality.

--clothing and shoes that fit a tall guy such as myself that I likewise can't generally get here.

--quality computer and AV electronics and accessories.

 

And in my experience, they're zero value in the first two categories, and not much value in the 3rd, unless I want stuff of questionable quality.

 

But everyone's shopping habits and needs are different. I've never needed any replica car keys...

 

 

Edited July 6, 2017 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[pgrahmm]

9 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

If you mean 30+ pounds, that's likely to be expensive, so matter how you go... It's just going to be a matter of how expensive.

 

Shipito has an online calculator on their website that you can use to see their pricing and delivery options based on weight, package dimensions and destination and postal code.  Also, as you might expect, different shipping methods have different maximum numbers for package dimensions and total weight. For example, I don't think the Thai Post guys on their motorcycles typically deliver 30 pound packages.

 

The Shipito Economy Airmail service I've mentioned above has, I believe, a 4 lbs per package maximum weight. I usually try to stay within that, even if it means dividing up things into smaller or separate orders. That gets their most economical shipping rate, and it also tends to avoid issues on the Thai end where packages valued at more than $40 or so, even if handled by Thai Post, are more likely to get some tax and/or duty assessment (even though usually much much less than if you went via the DHL/FedEx route).

 

https://www.shipito.com/en/shipping-calculator?countrycode=US

I just did this on MyUS for 18k & ecconomy shipping was $185.....

I emailed to ask through what service & telling them I didn't want the big 3 to deliver it....

The first time I looked there was a chart showing all the reshippers services....I was going to put it here for everybody's reference but haven't re-found it....

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

1 minute ago, pgrahmm said:

I just did this on MyUS for 18k & ecconomy shipping was $185.....

I emailed to ask through what service & telling them I didn't want the big 3 to deliver it....

The first time I looked there was a chart showing all the reshippers services....I was going to put it here for everybody's reference but haven't re-found it....

 

Usually the way it works with most reshippers is, you give them the package weight and dimensions and destination, and then they'll respond with a list of whatever various shipping companies and service levels and prices they have available for a package with those particulars. Then, it's up to you the customer to decide what level/type of service you want to pay for.

 

[pgrahmm]

20 minutes ago, tomwct said:

I'm not sure what your shopping for, but we use aliexpress.com. Everything we buy comes from China. Never a problem and we never pay any tax or duties. Check it out! I just bought a replacement key for my Toyota. The dealer wanted 2200 THB, I paid $1.78 US.

All I ever find is bulk quantities.....

[tomwct]

Just now, pgrahmm said:

All I ever find is bulk quantities.....

I think your thinking about Alibaba.com. aliexpress.com you can buy one piece or more.

[clokwise]

I purchased a couple $100~150 CD box sets from Amazon this year. Previously when I did this, even at the cheapest shipping rate, Thai customs open them and then Thai post would bill me on delivery. However, as others have stated, Amazon.com now is pre-calculating your duty and tax, and you pay in advance at checkout time. Supposedly, if you end up paying less they will refund you the difference. Not sure how that works.

 

But something changed just this year - Amazon.com now offers a slowest and cheapest rate, without the duty and tax added on. It ships via "UPS i-parcel", with tracking, and arrives sealed up in a massive woven plastic bag delivered by Thai Post. In both instances, it clearly had not been inspected and I escaped paying any duty or tax whatsoever. Shipping time was 3 weeks. Your mileage may vary, but this seems to be the best option for me at this time.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

17 minutes ago, clokwise said:

But something changed just this year - Amazon.com now offers a slowest and cheapest rate, without the duty and tax added on. It ships via "UPS i-parcel", with tracking, and arrives sealed up in a massive woven plastic bag delivered by Thai Post. In both instances, it clearly had not been inspected and I escaped paying any duty or tax whatsoever. Shipping time was 3 weeks. Your mileage may vary, but this seems to be the best option for me at this time.

What price did you pay for Amazon's shipping in that instance, and what was the pounds weight of the package?  In other words, how much was the net shipping charge per pound?

 

Also, in the past at least, Amazon had some different shipping methods available for books and CDs vs. for regular packages. And of course, a lot of merchandise, including many basic electronics, Amazon simply won't ship internationally period, no matter the price. So, do you know if the UPS I-parcel method you mention is available for products other than books and CDs?

[DineshR]

Thanks TallGuyJohninBKK ....yes, I agree. Amazon is more expensive than the other options mentioned but the couple of times I used them, I really needed what I had ordered quickly ... their orders are trackable right to your door (and I live in the boondocks here in Isaan !) and they come fast - order to you is less than 5 days in the 2 times I ordered from them. In my case, they used UPS both times. And I think their shipping prices are comparable to USPS pricing.

 

As an example, I bought the Google wifi mesh system and here is their pricing breakdown. Units arrived in 5 days.

 

Order Summary

Item(s) Subtotal:

$297.80

Shipping & Handling:

$59.50

 

Total before tax:

$357.30

Estimated tax to be collected:

$0.00

Import Fees Deposit

$33.11

 

Refund Total:

$7.85

 

They sent me the refund about 4 weeks after I received the goods.  The shipping cost 59.5 while the duty after the refund was 25.26 - about 8.5% ... and this is cheaper than getting it from Lazada where it is currently around THB17000. The comparable USPS priority mail international (delivery in 6-10 days) is about $45. In the end, you pay for what you get.

 

[DineshR]

Clokwise - the refund is credited to the payment method you used to buy the goods ... that's how my refund was processed. And in my case, neither package was opened by customs.

[pgrahmm]

1 hour ago, tomwct said:

I'm not sure what your shopping for, but we use aliexpress.com. Everything we buy comes from China. Never a problem and we never pay any tax or duties. Check it out! I just bought a replacement key for my Toyota. The dealer wanted 2200 THB, I paid $1.78 US.

It's a Cinch 4 man tent + add ons....Only available through one source....

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

8 minutes ago, DineshR said:

Thanks TallGuyJohninBKK ....yes, I agree. Amazon is more expensive than the other options mentioned but the couple of times I used them, I really needed what I had ordered quickly ... their orders are trackable right to your door (and I live in the boondocks here in Isaan !) and they come fast - order to you is less than 5 days in the 2 times I ordered from them. In my case, they used UPS both times. And I think their shipping prices are comparable to USPS pricing.

 

As an example, I bought the Google wifi mesh system and here is their pricing breakdown. Units arrived in 5 days.

 

Order Summary

Item(s) Subtotal:

$297.80

Shipping & Handling:

$59.50

 

Total before tax:

$357.30

Estimated tax to be collected:

$0.00

Import Fees Deposit

$33.11

 

Refund Total:

$7.85

 

They sent me the refund about 4 weeks after I received the goods.  The shipping cost 59.5 while the duty after the refund was 25.26 - about 8.5% ... and this is cheaper than getting it from Lazada where it is currently around THB17000. The comparable USPS priority mail international (delivery in 6-10 days) is about $45. In the end, you pay for what you get.

 

 

Thanks for posting the added info. But to be able to do any kind of comparison, we'd need to know what was the total shipping weight of your package?

 

As for Amazon vs. Shipito, the Shipito Economy Airmail I mentioned above does not include tracking, but you can pay for either delivery insurance or delivery and contents insurance for relatively small extra amounts.  Their shipping time from California to BKK seems to run about 14 days on average, sometimes 10, sometimes 18 or so days...  So it might be a bit longer to the boonies here. Yet, over the years, I've shipped a ton of packages thru them, and never yet had one go entirely missing.

 

I did, however, have two packaged food-related packages get opened and ruined by Thai customs. One was oatmeal, the other was small packaged chocolates. And in both cases, Thai customs opened (read ripped apart) the retail packaging and dumped the unpackaged contents (oatmeal cereal in one shipment, chocolates in a different shipment) out into the shipping box instead of keeping the contents in the retail packaging and resealing it after they'd done whatever they needed to do. Jerks!!!!