May 11, 2011

My Shopping Box

verabear DigiScrapping, Interesting stuff, Project365, Ramblings and Brain farts, Shopping 6 Comments

I received a much-awaited package today – my Project Life kit!

It’s such an amazing product, a simplified scrapooking system for those of us who don’t have as much time or creativity to build full scrapbook pages from scratch Learn more about Project Life from this video from its creator:

 

But I will blog about this more in more in the coming days and months, for now let me highlight how easy it was to have it shipped to the Philippines.

Easy Amazon Transaction

I ordered the kit via Amazon on the 28th of March. The cost meant that the package qualified for free shipping within the US. At the time, there was a free trial available for an Amazon program and I signed up for that. It allowed for my package to be delivered for free, within 3 days.

I loved how it was so easy to track the package from within the Amazon site, and how real-time the updates were.

My-Shopping Box

So from the store it shipped from (I’m guessing Becky’s homebase), my kit travelled to the US address assigned to me at My-ShoppingBox – a package forwarding service that consolidates your packages and sends them when and where you want them to.

Package arrived there on the 31st of March. I authorized the shipment, made the payment, and waited a full month (+ a few days) before I finally received it.

There is an easy way to track the package from My-Shopping Box as well. However, updates are not done as real-time as, say UPS. In fact, it’s only today that I actually saw the status change from Departed from US.

The service had some problems with their website last week – logins were not being accepted. I did get an answer from customer support about the issue, and they gladly gave me the status of the package upon giving them the tracking number. And guess what? They were pretty accurate. They said to expect the package on May 10 or 11, and it came today!

I love it. I don’t have time today to work on it, but I will make time this weekend. Excited!

Anyway, back to the shipping service… My-Shopping Box collects an annual membership fee. I forgot how much, but I got in for free because I’m a BDO credit card holder. There’s also supposed to be a rebate for shipping when you use your BDO/AMEX cards but I haven’t checked yet if I got any. There’s a good number of questions in their FAQ page that should help anyone decide if they’re going to sign up for the service.

You pay them per package you have shipped. To save money, you can consolidate several smaller items you purchase from different sites (or were given to you as gifts) into one package. If not all items arrive at the same time, you may have to pay a minimal storage fee if your package has been in the facility for more than 15 days. This shouldn’t be a problem as long as you plan your purchases.

Though they weigh your package and charge accordingly, it’s still cheaper to ship via this service than if I shipped directly from the seller to my home. The time it took to get the package delivered would probably be just the same – 4-6 weeks.

The convenience is that they deliver it to your door and no more unexpected exorbitant Customs fees.

Have you tried My Shopping Box or any similar service? How was your experience?