Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jenna80ss]

Hey,
Has anyone sent home big boxes of things? My boyfriend and I finish in December and want to travel around Asia before going home. We don't want to lug ALL our stuff with us. Is there an economical way of sending home lots of stuff? I was thinking cargo shipping but can't find out any information.
Speed doesn't matter only that it makes it back safe and sound!
Thanks

[rudyflyer]

pack it up and send it ground to wherever cheap and it takes 6-12 weeks to reach the US. I would advise smallish boxes since there are size/weight restrictions. Done it twice with no problems

[Bulsajo]

If you get the largest size box from the post office (I think it's just called 'A-1') it'll cost you 1000 for the box. It's about 20"x30"x36" or so and you can put a max of 20kg in it. Price is based on weight, insurance, shipping method- My wife and I shipped 26 boxes this way to Ontario by sea over a 2 month period. Average weight was 18kg., average price (with each box insured for 200,000) was 45,000. They say 6-8 weeks, but every single box we sent arrived intact and ahead of schedule. Pack them carefully and use lots of packing tape to reinforce them. A lot cheaper than using a shipper, but of course you're very limited on the size of what you can send. For larger items we paid for extra baggage on the flight, which I believe was the equivalent of $100US per bag at that time. We looked into shippers and most of them had a minimum space requirement of 3 cubic meters and the going rate was around 750,000 per cubic meter. We didn't have that much stuff (or so we thought!) plus we couldn't find any reputable shippers- everyone we knew seemed to have a horror story about the ones we came across (sorry, don't recall any names). If we were to do it all over, we'd probably keep looking for a decent shipper and buy some nice Korean chests and coffee tables to take up the extra space.

[waterbaby]

I know this won't cover you for everything you have to send, but you can always try contacting your airline and asking them for extra baggage allowance. My husband and I managed to get an extra 20kg out of Thai airways just by asking for it.