My experience with USGoBuy forwarder service

It started when my sister and I wanted to buy some stuff from Glossier.  However they do not ship to Malaysia.

I searched online to try to find which parcel forwarders are reliable.  Whenever I thought I found one that seems like a good deal, I would later find bad reviews on the forwarder.  In the end, I concluded that there are always unfortunate events that could have happened.  The best I can do is just to find one that has the least negative reviews compared to others.  

There are also other criteria to concern when choosing the service.  For example, if you are a frequent shopper, some of the forwarders offer lower price shipping fees with yearly or monthly service charge.  But if you are the type that only buy once in a blue moon, this will not be worth it for you.

Criteria to consider of choosing a forwarder:

• Membership Fee
• Repackaging Service Charges
• Holding Fee
• Holding Period
• Consolidation of packages
• Insurance
• Import Duty and Taxes

From what I know, if your purchases are more than RM 500 (including shipping fee), you might have to pay for the import tax in Malaysia when the parcel go through the customs.  I read it is based on your luck to be taxed or not.  I have not tried to purchase anything that is more than that amount yet. So I cannot tell if this is entirely true or not.

I ended up choosing USGoBuy.  They have ShipForMe and BuyForMe services.  I choose the ShipForMe service, as I am able to use my own credit card to pay.  For the BuyForMe service, it is useful when the site does not accept overseas credit card.  The other reason is there is no sales tax in USGoBuy Oregon warehouse.

How does it works? (ShipForMe)

1. Register and get your US address
2. Place order from the website using the US address
3. Add packages info in "My Packages" such as Vendor, Order No, Tracking No, Item List, Price, Quantity
4. When packages arrived, go to "Arrived Packages"
5. Key in your mailing address, and they will show a few courier services available with the price list, select one
6. Pay for the forward cost
7. And they will ship your package out after you have paid

My package took around 6 days (Wed-Mon) from Oregon to reach Malaysia using DHL.  Not too bad.  This is the second cheapest option.  The cheapest option is using USPS First Class.  For your reference, the box itself is 11 inc x 9 inc x 3 inc, weight 2 lbs. For DHL, it cost $43.52 and for USPS First Class it is $24.84. I choose DHL because, there is no tracking for USPS after the parcel leave US customs.  It is a bit expensive but I do not want to risk package lost.  Below is what I copied from the website regarding USPS First Class.

• USPS First-Class Mail 

First-Class Mail is the least expensive, most immediate option for mailing packages of 4 lbs. or less(cannot exceed $400 in value). Although First-Class Mail may be the least expensive option, it is not a guaranteed service. Delivery by a specific date at a specific time is not available. Please note that for some packages sent via USPS First-class, there won't be any tracking information once it goes through U.S. customs. You may need to check your packages in a local post office once it is ready for delivery.

Encounter problem
And also there is one problem that I encounter when filling up my Malaysia mailing address.  The length of the "Address" is only 32 characters.  I could not fit my address of 2 lines.  I found a way to it in the end.  I filled the second line of the address in the "City" instead, it worked.

After going through all these, I think it is easier just to buy from a local re-seller if you are only buying one or two items and do not want the hassle to worry about the shipping.  The hardest part I feel is to estimate the cost of shipping, as you usually do not know what is the box size the seller ship the goods in.  I estimated the size of the box and the weight to be less than what it actually is.  My advice is to estimate it higher.

If you are interested to buy online from the US, perhaps you can try USGoBuy (This is an invitation link, I will get coupon in return if you use my link to register and use their services) as my first experience with them is positive.