Tag: shipping

A couple of days back I headed with a friend to AAB World in Symphony Mall to check out the Sony A7R II camera. She wasn’t planning on buying the camera from them since we figured it would be much cheaper from Amazon, but she did want to check it out in person before placing the order. When we got to AAB World to our surprise we found out it was actually considerably cheaper to buy the camera locally, which she ended up doing. Below are some popular camera price comparisons from three brands to Amazon, keep in mind with the Amazon prices below you still need to add around 8% tax and the shipping fee to Kuwait in addition to Kuwait customs. So the actual cost is even higher. AAB World is also slightly flexible with their prices, if you’re buying other stuff along with the camera they’ll more than likely give you a small discount.

Sony A7S II (Body Only)
Amazon: KD 962
AAB World: KD 949

Nikon D810 (Body Only)
Amazon: KD 841
AAB World: KD 799

Canon EOS 5D Mark III (Body Only)
Amazon: KD 752
AAB World: KD 649.950

If only more things were priced like this in Kuwait.

Last week I had a disaster of an experience with Aramex since they had misplaced a package of mine. What actually pissed me off was the lack of transparency from their support team. My package was coming from Germany and like all Shop & Ship packages stop in Bahrain before heading to Kuwait. On February 13th my package left Bahrain and after no updates for a few days I decided to contact support via their live chat. According to Aramex, my package was clearing customs, no biggie so I continued to wait. By February 21st, over a week after my package left Bahrain my tracking number had still not been updated. So I contacted support again and they told me they’ll check on my package and have someone call me.

Since I was frustrated, I decided to vent my frustration to Aramex on their twitter account. They replied back telling me they had checked on my package and it was currently clearing customs. That didn’t help with my frustration since my package was just a pair of sneakers and I didn’t know why it needed 8 days to clear. Since it wasn’t urgent though I was like whatever. Then, a few minutes later I get a call from Aramex telling me that they can’t find my package and they needed a few days to try and figure out where it was. I was like WTF? You guys just told me on twitter that my package was in customs. The guy over the phone told me the people managing the twitter account didn’t have access to check my package status.

So I went back on twitter now noticeably upset since I couldn’t understand why they would tell me my package was in customs while I was also being told my package was lost. In the end though it looked like the twitter account people were right while the person that called me was wrong since my package ended up getting it’s status updated then then delivered the following day.

For some reason, Aramex have recently turned into a big mess and I just wish they were more transparent. Things happen and consumers are mostly understanding. When my internet connection at home is down, first thing I do when I call support up is ask them if the problem is from their side or mine. If they’re facing issues I just reply telling them ok just wanted to check and then hang up. If my package usually takes 3 days from Bahrain to arrive to my door in Kuwait and now suddenly it’s been 8 days and my package was still not delivered, something is clearly wrong so fill me in and don’t act like it’s business as usual. If you’re having issues with flights from Bahrain, local customs officials being lazy or whatever the reason, I’d like to know so I can be understanding.

In any case the reason I wanted to post about Aramex in the first place is that we can now finally pay online with Knet. You’d think this would have been their first feature on their website but up until now we could only pay by credit card or PayPal. Knet obviously makes things a lot more convenient.

Just an FYI for those of you who use mail forwarding companies to ship items from the States. MyUS which I’ve previously posted about [Here] now no longer calculate volumetric weight, instead they calculate the cost of your shipment based on actual weight. What this means is you now pay a lot cheaper for shipping since if your box is huge or tiny it doesn’t matter anymore. [Link]

At the moment my two favorite mail forwarding companies are Aramex and MyUS. I use the Aramex Shop & Ship service for packages that I am not in a rush to get and I use MyUS for packages that I need ASAP. The way these mailboxes work for those of you who aren’t aware, a lot of online stores don’t mail products outside of the US. With a US forwarding mailbox you order stuff online and mail it to your US address, then your packages gets shipped from that mailbox to your address in Kuwait and you just pay the shipping cost. Makes online shopping a lot easier.

A few weeks back I got an email from another US mail forwarding company called Shipito. According to the original email, Shipito are the biggest mail forwarders to South America and Europe and they’re hoping to become the same in the Middle East. To try out their service, they offered to ship any package for me that weighed up to 10KG. 10 freakin kilos!! I was ordering a MacBook Air around that same time but I was like nahhh, that wouldn’t really be taking advantage of their offer since it’s so light. After a bit of online shopping I realized that all the winter gear was heavily discounted because the season was over so I decided to order a snowboard, snowboard bindings and boots. They were 2015 models and were selling for 40% off at Backcountry (a really great store btw), so I decided to order them in hopes I would still manage to get some snowboarding done before the summer. That was obviously before I hurt my ankle last week.

I roughly calculated the weight of all my snowboard gear and it was going to be around 10KG, so I placed the order and shipped it to my Shipito mailbox which they had setup for me. Shipito provides you with three different US mailboxes to use each with their own advantage:

Minden, NV
The biggest Shipito warehouse. More storage (six times bigger mailbox capacity for free storage compared to California, or double of Oregon). 180 days storage for Virtual Mailbox (other locations offer 90 days). Lowest shipping cost for USPS, FedEx and DHL.

Tualatin, OR
No sales tax in Oregon! Save on 7-9% expensive purchases! Full service location. More storage space for your Virtual mailbox and shipping rates slightly higher than in California.

Hawthorne 2, CA
All shipping methods available. Consolidation available. Low shipping cost and fast speed due to proximity to LAX airport. Russian Post available. Lowest price for Airmail.

Clearly the biggest advantage Shipito has over Aramex and MyUS was the fact they have an Oregon location which means you don’t pay taxes. When I ordered my Macbook Air from the Apple Store, I paid $87.43 in taxes when I shipped it to MyUS mailbox. If I had shipped it to Shipito’s Oregon address I wouldn’t have paid any tax whatsoever. I placed my order for the snowboard gear and two days later it reached my Shipito mailbox.

Once a package arrives to your Shipito mailbox, you have the option to have 10 photos of your items taken before they ship it (costs: $2.5). My packages arrived in two shipments so they took 20 photos in total and emailed them to me. They then gave me a bunch of options to help cut down on shipping. First thing I wanted to do is consolidate the two shipments into one. Then I had the option to completely get rid of all the boxes to cut down on shipping cost, or to keep the product boxes but have them repackage them so they can minimize the space used, or to leave everything the way it is. Since I needed the product boxes incase I needed to return an item, I had them redo the packaging. They did that and also sent me pictures of the whole process by email. Finally the package was ready to send and they gave me the following carriers I could ship with: DHL Express, FedEx Priority, FedEx Economy, USPS Priority Mail, USPS Express Mail, Airmail Economy, TNT Economy, TNT Express and USPS First Class International Parcel.

I chose DHL Express and a couple of days later my package had arrived to my doorstep in Kuwait.

So would I use Shipito again?

Obviously my first experience was great since I didn’t pay for anything but since I have the mailbox already setup with them I would probably use them again. For one thing they’re great when ordering from the Apple Store. I placed an order for an Apple Watch and it still hasn’t gotten canceled by Apple so I think they ship to Shipito mailboxes. I tried previously with both my Aramex and MyUS mailboxes and both orders got canceled. Plus you don’t pay tax, that has to be the biggest advantage. Shipping cost on the other hand varies. Aramex is by far the cheapest option but also the slowest. Shipito vs MyUS is more difficult to calculate because MyUS now doesn’t charge based on volumetric weight but on actual weight (up to a certain size). So if its a big box MyUS will probably be cheaper. But if it’s a smaller box Shipito is cheaper. For example a 25x25x25cm box weighing 1KG would cost $47 with Shipito but $52 with MyUS. So yes I would use my Shipito address again mostly when ordering small electronics like laptops, cameras and other items that don’t come in a large box. Also expensive items I would save a lot on by not paying any tax.

If you want to find out more about Shipito you can visit their website [Here]

Today I picked up a package from the post office for the very first time and I was pleasantly surprised with my experience.

A few weeks ago I ordered an item from an online store in Germany and chose DHL as my shipping option. Little did I know that DHL also had postal mail which is how the store mailed my package to Kuwait. When I found out they had shipped it by regular mail I almost had a heart attack. The item was limited (just 1 of 5) and I thought it was gonna get lost for sure because I kept hearing how screwed the local mail system was. It took around 10 days for the package to get here and I finally had the time today to go pick it up.

I took my tracking number and headed to the Kaifan Post Office where all international mail gets delivered to. Package pickups are in the basement and all I had to do was give a woman behind a counter my tracking number which she then typed out on a computer and told me that it had arrived and to wait while they get it. Five minutes later my name was called and I showed them my civil ID card and signed a paper that I had received the shipment. My shipment was then passed over to the customs agent who opened to see what was inside before handing it over to me.

It was such an incredibly easy process that I think I’m going to be shipping stuff to Kuwait via regular mail much more often. Things to note, they’re open from 8AM to 1PM and once a package arrives to Kuwait they store it for 40 days before sending it back or destroying it. If you want to know where the post office is, here it is on [Google Maps]

Update: They’ve changed the location. To pick up mail you now need to head to Al Sadiq, block 5 near the police station and boubyan bank. Here is the location on [Google Maps]