Why use shipping company and not the shipping provided by the store
There are several benefits of using package forwarding company like Shipping Storm. While you may save much money by shopping online in the USA, letting the stores ship to you directly, the international shipping costs might begin to eat into your savings. Why is that? There are two main reasons.
Consolidation
Stores won’t consolidate for you. If you shop in multiple stores within a relatively short period, let’s say a couple of weeks, we will consolidate all your purchases from multiple stores into a single shipment to reduce the international shipping costs. You will save a lot of your money by the consolidation alone.
Let’s say you shop in five different online stores. You buy one shirt on Amazon, a pair of glasses on Michael Kors, sweatshirt on GAP, four T-shirts on Guess and a pair of shoes on Zappos. There will be at least five packages coming to your home. It will often also mean that you will be dealing with Customs at least five times. If you use Shipping Storm services, you will reduce the time to only once. Read here about advantages of consolidation.
Moreover, you will often get multiple packages even if you shop in one store only. It happens all the time. Online retailers regularly send one purchase in multiple shipments. See this real-life example from one of our purchases we made on behalf of one of our members with our Shopping Assistance service.
We bought six items for our member on Guess.com. Four purses and two tees. In this particular case, this single purchase of six items arrived at our warehouse in 3 different packages on three different days.
Packing
The stores are often not very good at packing. In our Guess example quite an expensive purse arrived in the plastic bag. See here:
While it is okay for domestic shipping within the USA, it may not be suitable, and safe, for international shipping. In the latter case, the package is on the way much longer, there are lot more people and machines handling the package, and thus, much bigger risk the merchandise will be damaged.
Another issue with packing in the USA is the size of the boxes. There are hundreds of different sizes of boxes. Having too many different sizes in the warehouse is inconvenient and takes too much space. Also, for people who pack the shipments, looking for the right size of the box is time-consuming, and thus, inefficient. Time is money, after all.
To speed up the packing process, the stores use only a few most common, standard sizes of boxes. Since they mostly ship domestically within the USA only, they do not need to worry about dimensional weight, neither. While this approach makes packing fast and convenient for them, in international shipping, unused space means bigger dimensional weight, thus higher shipping costs. See how stores often pack in the example of 2 shipments from Amazon:
So how a company like Shipping Storm can help you?
We are shipping company. Shipping is our primary business. The more we help you to save you on shipping, the more happy, and loyal to us, you will be. So we do our best to pack very well.
We do carry a large number of boxes of different sizes. We also take the time to try and find the right box for your shipment. We invest the time in both finding the right box and pack as well and efficiently as possible.
To help you with the consolidation of all your purchases, we provide 60 days of free storage. So you have enough time to do all your shopping and ship only when you are ready to ship one larger consolidated shipment.
How does it work?
When you submit your request to consolidate and ship, we take all your packages, unpack from the original boxes used by the merchant, we discard all of the extra boxes and packing material.
Then we find the box which is closest to the volume of your stuff. We thoroughly place all the items into a single box, so we use as little space as possible. We pack very carefully too; we add padding when necessary, so your things will be safe, and will not arrive damaged to you. Once we consolidate, we close the box, we measure and weigh the new package. We put this one consolidated package in the system so that you can see it in your account. You pay a very reasonable price for one shipment only, and we ship it to you. Simple as that. This is how Shipping Storm package looks like.
Why choose Shipping Storm over many other shipping companies?
Most companies offer consolidation services. Let’s look into details, then.
For example, our biggest world competitors are Shipito and MyUS. They do offer consolidation, but for a hefty extra fee, for their “Premium” members only. With Shipito and MyUS, those “Premium” members have to pay a fee every single month, no matter if they ship or not. Unless you shop regularly and a lot, it becomes quite expensive.
Look at another shipping company, Borderlinx. They do consolidation, too. However, they do not repack. They leave all your purchases in their original boxes. Borderlinx will merely put the original boxes together in one big box and make it a single shipment. However, that defies the very essence of the service, to save you as much money as possible. By leaving it all in original boxes, they make the consolidated package unnecessary big and heavier, so you will end up paying more. Besides, with Borderlinx, you can not consolidate packages when using their “Economy service.” They force you to buy more expensive service.
Our biggest competitors in Russia Shopfans and Pochtoy do quite the same as Borderlinx. Consolidation is not available at their cheapest shipping options. Thus they simply make you choose more expensive option.
Shopmate, our competitor in Australia, does consolidation but only for packages from the same U.S. retailer. To our mind, this is not true consolidation because shoppers rarely buy in one and the same store. So Shopmate forces you to pay more for several shipments.
With Shipping Storm, you don’t have to pay for consolidation and may shop in any stores. It is not a privilege for paying members. It is not only for those who pay a monthly fee. We don’t even have to pay member, no “common” and “premium” members. We try all members equally, and we do offer consolidation free to everybody.
The only fee we charge beside the shipment is fee for processing incoming packages. We accept the package, take photo and upload it to the system. All this is just for $3.
We also truly repack. We discard all the boxes and everything which adds unnecessary weight and volume. We do our best to make your shipment as small and light as possible, of course, without compromising the safety of your stuff. So you will pay as little as possible.
Do we make less money on each and every shipment than all our competitors? Probably yes. Do we mind? No. We want to be the best shipping company in the world. Seriously. Moreover, we believe that our approach and attitude will pay off in the long term. That you will be so happy with Shipping Storm that you will always choose work with us, and nobody else. Always and forever.