Cheap wayof mailing parcels to the USA

I recently followed the advice given by Martin Lewis, the GMTV money saving tipster, on finding alternatives to FedEx when sending parcels to the USA. I wanted to send two Christmas gift packages home and when I got a quote from FedEx it was going to cost me £96 per parcel!
From the GMTV website I contacted www.parcel2go.com [nofollow] and was quoted £48 per parcel. There was a little bit more paperwork to do and I had to print out my own labels but for half price it was definitely worth the trouble. Both parcels arrived in Michigan after only 5 days which was great. If you want to check out the website where Martin Lewis talks a out this here is the link.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/cheap-parcel-delivery [nofollow]
Go the International Section

Happy Holidays!

Just wanted to bump this up in case someone else might have a need for it. 

Thanks for sharing this!   

Out of curiousity, what was the post office price?

I just checked this for a package I was planning on sending via Parcel Force... They wanted wanted just over £50 and this site says it will send FexEx for £34.  Although I am reading fine print and it says that the "shipment WILL be charged VAT for items leaving the EU".   Were your recipients made to pay VAT upon reciept?

My lovely local post office gave me the top tip to keep packages under the 2kg weight and they can then go as a 'small packet', which is much cheaper than using Parcelforce.  It is far cheaper to send 2 packages of 2kg than 1 package of 4kg.

That IS a good tip



MirraJay, technically, yes, shipping is subject to VAT.

I wanted to send my Christmas cards to the Us...with a cute British postal stamp.
Didn't happen, I wound up sending one padded envelope with my 30 cards ,and a check for stamps ,to my son in Florida.It was less than 7 pounds to mail it that way.

I wanted to send my Christmas cards to the Us...with a cute British postal stamp.
Didn't happen, I wound up sending one padded envelope with my 30 cards ,and a check for stamps ,to my son in Florida.It was less than 7 pounds to mail it that way.

I ended up doing that as well!  Would have cost us near to £30 to send all our christmas cards.  So instead I put them all in an envelope and sent it to my mom for about £6 total.

I wanted to send my Christmas cards to the Us...with a cute British postal stamp.
Didn't happen, I wound up sending one padded envelope with my 30 cards ,and a check for stamps ,to my son in Florida.It was less than 7 pounds to mail it that way.

We went to the US for Thanksgiving so DW had written all our UK bought cards and we took them with us and then mailed them over there.
We then bought American cards there for family/friends in the UK

Hi all

Just to expand on this a bit...

I've been using Parcel2go for quite a while now and they'd be my first choice when sending things I'd sold to the USA. As competetion has increased in this sector, other players have come to the market - I also now use P4D.co.uk who are also very competitive as well.

Now depending on what you send and it's weight, you need to check between various couriers and compare to each other and check and compare all those with Royal Mail. If it's something quite 'light' then I tend to find the Post office/Royal mail provide better pricing than the couriers. For anything bulkier or heavier it's usually the couriers that are better. Fedex and DHL usually work out the most expensive - I haven't used those guys to send anything yet. However, the other way around, I've had shipments in from US/Far East and TNT have proved cost effective and in one case Fedex were just about the cheapest from Hong Kong. So, I always spend some time comparing to get the right/best price.

Hope this helps - Cheers, DtM! West London & Slough UK!