anyone try citi globeshopper before? and hopshopgo by CGW and paypal?
MyUS sucks big time. There's a reason why most if not all posts related to that sites were posted by those with very little post counts and unsurprisingly all their postings were dedicated to that site only.
You have been warned.
Any comments/suggestions?
Cool story bro/sis.
In all seriousness, Borderlinx can match or even better all the points you have stated other than repacking. It is a bane I am willing to sacrifice for its cheaper rates and assured free insurance cover which you conveniently chose to leave out, for all the bad press MyUS had in not delivering the goods.
The estimated fees for a 20 kg parcel is only SGD $148 using the same DHL courier. Further, most of the users here are light users which seldom partake in such big shipments. Even when they do, they will want a trusted one who can deliver.
Save your efforts in promoting the bogus US firm for your vested interest. The locals here are not risk-takers and will not trust a company which has such negative bad press and reviews.
I'm not trying to talk anyone into MyUS here (in fact I found this thread in an effort to decide whether to try somewhere else) but when I saw how negative the MyUS feedback was I thought I'd post a contrarian experience and in exchange someone may be able to tell me if I'd be better off with another shipper anyway. Although this is only my second post it should be obvious from the below that I'm not a bot or a shill.
Here's my experience:
- I signed up for MyUS at the recommendation of a friend who has used them for years first when he was living in the Caymans and needed a US forwarding address plus shipments. I wasn't aware there was such a competition for this type of service (actually I thought probably not many people in Singapore know about it!)
- I don't have any discounts, i.e. paid $20 to sign up and $7/month until I decide to pay their yearly fee
- I mostly used Amazon but also Buy.com and a couple of other one-off places
- No problems at all receiving parcels
- MyUS interface is really good, seems to provide very fast notification (via email) when parcels arrived, and has them itemised
- I asked questions to customer feedback twice and received prompt answers
- For declared value, they use whatever is on the shipping invoice (e.g. Amazon) but if there is no value they have some kind of reference table to use to estimate value. I experimented with marking things as "gifts" in Amazon so no value was indicated and found that on average their estimated value was below what I paid, but sometimes it was higher
- At first they let me manually reduce declared value by 25%, but after about 5 packages and one week suddenly they let me adjust values to as low as 50% of estimated or invoiced value. However for some shipments (certain ones from Amazon) the value was fixed and I couldn't reduce it at all. I don't understand what logic they use to decide any of these rules.
- I accumulated probably 15 or so shipments together within a few weeks
- Initial shipping costs per pound seemed high compared to delta/additional costs, so I decided it wasn't worth me keeping value below $400 to avoid GST
- Total purchases was probably close to US$1000 but eventually I was able to declare a total value of US$540
- My shipment was 41 lbs, although I was worried about dimensional weight I only paid for actual shipping weight, about US$180 from DHL. This was exactly as per their "shipping estimate" calculator, i.e. no nasty surprises
- Shipment took only 3.5 days to arrive
- DHL charged me GST for $540 + $180 shipping, which worked out to about SG$70 plus a $10 admin fee charged by DHL. i.e. they collected about SG$80 cash from me on delivery
- I found that MyUS did an EXCELLENT job of repacking the items. They took every single product box out of the shipping boxes (e.g. out of Amazon's boxes) and packed everything into a far smaller box of their own than I had expected.
Based on the above experience, I calculated the following for this particular case:
- Shipping cost me about 18% (i.e. US$180 against $1000 of goods)
- GST and fees cost me about 5% (i.e. SG$80 against US$1000 of actual goods)
- DHL fees worked out to about US$9.67 per kg, i.e. SG$12.10/kg
So in conclusion, here is what I'd say are the notable points:
- Good online system plus customer support
- Ability to self declare most item values to 50% of purchase cost
- Excellent repacking
Based on an effective SG$12/kg for a shipment close to 20kg, it seems vpost could be a fair bit cheaper based on $13.40 + $9/kg, especially for lighter shipments (and especially no monthly fee). MyUS = SG$226, Vpost = SG$185 estimate for my above example. I read somewhere else (perhaps this thread?) about promotions offering as much as 20% off MyUS though, which would make it more competitive. So shipping is a bit expensive but the ability to reduce declared value plus the excellent repacking somewhat offset that extra cost too.
Any comments/suggestions?
which one ships fastest?
..So in conclusion, here is what I'd say are the notable points:
- Good online system plus customer support
- Ability to self declare most item values to 50% of purchase cost
- Excellent repacking
Based on an effective SG$12/kg for a shipment close to 20kg, it seems vpost could be a fair bit cheaper based on $13.40 + $9/kg, especially for lighter shipments (and especially no monthly fee). MyUS = SG$226, Vpost = SG$185 estimate for my above example. I read somewhere else (perhaps this thread?) about promotions offering as much as 20% off MyUS though, which would make it more competitive. So shipping is a bit expensive but the ability to reduce declared value plus the excellent repacking somewhat offset that extra cost too.
Any comments/suggestions?
Cool story bro/sis.
In all seriousness, Borderlinx can match or even better all the points you have stated other than repacking. It is a bane I am willing to sacrifice for its cheaper rates and assured free insurance cover which you conveniently chose to leave out, for all the bad press MyUS had in not delivering the goods.
The estimated fees for a 20 kg parcel is only SGD $148 using the same DHL courier. Further, most of the users here are light users which seldom partake in such big shipments. Even when they do, they will want a trusted one who can deliver.
Save your efforts in promoting the bogus US firm for your vested interest. The locals here are not risk-takers and will not trust a company which has such negative bad press and reviews.
You guys are far too paranoid. As if I'd bother to put so much detail if I was somehow related to MyUS. Or for that matter if defending MyUS was my only goal then why would I create an account 6 months ago and ask about StarHub cable, purely so I can then lurk for 6 months in case someone later says something bad about my service? C'mon...
As for insurance, I really didn't think about it and don't recall them offering me it at any point. Wouldn't that only help me if DHL themselves damage or lose my package on the way? i.e. it wouldn't really cover me if MyUS lost my stuff either in their warehouse or sent to the wrong person, as it seems they have a reputation for in this forum?
Anyway, how did you calculate SG$148 and/or how do I get those rates myself? When I put Singapore into their website it says US$11 for the first 0.5kg and $2.85 for every additional 0.5kg. Wouldn't 20kg therefore be US$11 + 39*$2.85 = US$122, not including fuel surcharge? Including fuel surcharge would be US$138 = SG$172. How do I get the cheaper rate or where did I miscalculate? BTW when I put a weight of 20kg and value of US$500 into their "calculator" it estimates US$183.79 for Standard, so now I have three different figures.
How about a 50% discount code to let us test how reliable you are?
Hello, I work for myus.com and have been reading these posts and I first want to state that you saying you can read negative stuff about myus on that link is not that correct. If you read the posts fully they are end in the same way, with myus being responsive and with posts by our users who defend us. In all fairness you can read the same thing by typing in "comgateway scam", "vpost scam", "borderlinx scam" like you did for our company and you will see listings for each. I would enjoy hearing why you have such negative feedback on us and would like to just point to the bureau that grades business here in the US (the better business bureau) on quality and service has rated our company as the only A+ rated package forwarding company. Comgateway, Vpost, and Borderlinx either are not rated or rated very low. If there is something particular you feel that we can do better or discounts we can offer I am open and would be willing to listen and see if we can provide that to the users of this forum. I don't wish to bash anyone I just would like to open a dialog in hopes of dispelling any suggestion that our firm is slow, terrible, or even worse a scam.
Regards,
JW - MyUS employee
..In all fairness you can read the same thing by typing in "comgateway scam", "vpost scam", "borderlinx scam" like you did for our company and you will see listings for each..