Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Caffeinated]

Anyone here used a reshipper like myus.com? Could be a good way to shop overseas (ebay, amazon.com etc.) and get them to Korea if the shipping costs are reasonable even with the Korean import tax (about 20%, I've read).

[pkang0202]

Saw one last year and I was appalled at the prices they were quoting.

Looks like most of those places are ripoffs. How come they only offer express shipping? I haven't found a place that will ship via 7-14 day shipping, or surface route to bring down costs.

[Illysook]

In the U.S. the post office no longer offers surface mail to Korea. It all goes by air and it's really Fed-ex, but you get a break on the price. I imagine if a reshipper charged you the Fed-ex price and then sent your package through the USPS, that it could manage a small profit and still be worth it for you.

[Hawkeye Pierce]

Does anyone know how to ship packages by surface transit to Korea from the U.S.?

I have a small package of books I need to receive, but it will be too heavy to ship through the U.S. post office reasonably unless I cut one of the books in half.

There must be a way to send it by sea, even if the U.S. post office won't ship it that way.

[Lolimahro]

I have used a mail-forwarding service called Bongo. (http://bongous.com/)

It's okay. I can mail a fat pack of letters for around $40. They get to my address in Korea in about 3 days. This is good for things I need quickly, like birth/marriage certificates or criminal record checks. However, you only need those every so often. I also like using it so I don't have to rely on others to take care of my mail. Even though my family loves me and means well, they are often too busy to urgently take care of banking and postal matters on my behalf, and I get tired of asking them to do it.

Also, you have to pay a $15/month fee to use the service, and if you want your U.S. mail forwarded via USPS, you have to submit a document that has to be notarized (which costs like $30 at the U.S. Embassy).

In my opinion, it's not really worth it for shipping clothes and other items because the charges for shipping increase really quickly by weight. It's better just to order from stores who offer overseas shipping at a lesser price.

Also, my personal experience with Bongo in particular has been somewhat less than satisfactory. They have magically lost my documents a number of times, and you can only have one credit card in their system at a time. It takes a full day at least to switch credit cards, so you have to really think ahead about that. There are no last-minute purchases.

Also, they have made accounting errors and have forgotten to charge us our fees, which resulted in us getting charged the $15 monthly fee for January through June all at once last month. This happened to every customer. They have also had to switch warehouses during the time we've been customers with them (we have been with them almost a year now) which resulted in me having to call a whole bunch of places to change my address, which resulted in a whole bunch of more useless mail. None of these things was really a big deal by itself but piled on top of each other it's been quite a headache to use this service that doesn't really save us that much money. We probably spend at least $50 per month on the service if we mail something, $15 if we don't. We usually only have our mail sent out to us once a month.

In conclusion, I think it's better just to get mail sent electronically if you can (which is what we have been doing) and to find shops with online shipping at a reduced price. Unless you are going to need something in a hurry on a regular basis, these services are a big hassle and waste of money in my opinion.

The only way we are staying customers with them is because we have no one we can count on to look after our mail, especially since my parents just moved to Alaska

[Hawkeye Pierce]

Once upon a time there was this thing called surface mail. Letters and packages were not sent by air. Instead they were sent by ship, and it was about half the cost of airmail.

From what I can see, surface mail no longer exists when shipping from the U.S. It's very strange, since we all suffer from the loss.

[Old fat expat]

I have used them.

Returns are a [insert preferred MOD-EDIT]

If you get your sizing correct, great.