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Purchase at the Apple Store with delivery to Russia

What am I writing this post for?


In many forums, do not get tired of asking the same questions, the essence of which boils down to one - “Where and how is it cheaper to buy a certain device?”. Some, realizing that the best way to order it abroad and there is nothing complicated about it, decide to buy in a foreign online store, but they don’t get exactly what they expected, for example, the recent post “Is it profitable to shop abroad (for example, ebaytoday .ru) " .

This is especially pronounced when buying Apple equipment, since officially the equipment, if supplied, then with a long delay and in most cases at exorbitant prices. This article will not be able to solve the first problem fully, since Hong Kong is not the so-called “country of the first wave”, where Apple devices appear first, but I will try to describe the method of dealing with the second later.

So, what is this post about?


In this post, I want to describe the entire process of buying equipment on the Apple Store HK through an intermediary (Shipito), starting with the main points of working with shipito.com , ending with combining several packages into one and paying for delivery to Russia. The described method can be used for the US, but, unfortunately, I have not tried to do this and, according to some reviews, the Apple Store US refuses to send to Shipito addresses, at this point I will try to stop in more detail in conclusion.
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UPD: received the parcel, publish Tracking #: CP839884595HK and write the terms at the bottom of the article.

What is Shipito.com and why do we need this site?


As I said earlier, Shipito is an intermediary that provides a virtual postal address in Hong Kong, China and the United States, as well as providing services for the purchase of goods not only on the Internet, but also in the real stores of all these countries + Japan. Since the instructions for registering and using the service are well described in many forums, for example here , I will try not to devote a lot of time to this, but only to note the main thing, for example, that having registered under the “Individual Pakage” plan and paying through PayPal and suddenly decide that you will not use the service, you can actually return a part of the money, then from $ 8.5 they offer to return $ 3.35 ($ 5 service fee + cents for a transfer or something), but since Russian PayPal, as far as I know, cannot accept money, this operation is not new a. In the comments, MakeInstall fixes that a return is still possible. In general, before registering, you will firmly decide whether you will use the service, if you are still not sure and are ready to lose some of the money, then it is better, probably, to pay with a card, I personally have not tried.

We all decided to register. What's next?


Next you need to know our virtual address, which must be specified when ordering.
As previously mentioned, Shipito provides several addresses - several US states (CA, OR, NV), Hong Kong and China. We are interested in Hong Kong.

This address is the same for everyone and differs only in the 5 digits of your “box”.
Addresses in OR and NV are not initially accessible, to activate them, Virtual Mailbox is required and account verification is at least 50%, at the moment we are not interested.

Well, when will we buy?


Now we know the address where we will send the package from the Apple Store, you can proceed to the purchase procedure. Go to the Apple Store HK . We collect a complete shopping cart and click the Check Out Now button.

Stop, what's the amount? Some thousand dollars.

Yes, the price, naturally, is indicated in the currency of the state in which we buy, i.e. in Hong Kong dollars, the rate for March 18, 2011, as Google suggests, is ~ 3.65 Russian rubles for 1 Hong Kong dollar. Considering bank charges (Sberbank, Visa Classic) and the fact that the rate was slightly higher on March 12, the iPad 16GB with WiFi (1st Gen) (HK $ 2988) cost me a little more than 11 thousand rubles. In my opinion, very good. We continue.

Oh dear, how to fill in this address?


Indeed, only 2 lines are reserved for the address, and we have 4 of them, and even a stupid limit on the number of characters, plus we need a signature on delivery, so you should not write your name in Shipping Contact. In order not to write a lot of words I attach a picture so that the fields should be filled. In Shipping (left) - five *, you need to change to your box number. In Payment (on the right) - write your data and address.

If the address does not fit, feel free to fill in the top line, by and large Apple will understand that this is the address, and there is no way for them to check, but you need to specify the Russian address, then I will explain why.

After filling in the addresses and billing information, we need to either enter the existing Apple ID, or create a new one, and click the Place Order button. In this place, everything is clear and obvious.

We have placed an order and now we have to wait until the parcel reaches Shipito?


In fact, yes, but personally, in my case, Apple blocked 1 HKD on the card, most surprisingly, it blocked at the rate of 1 USD. Sberbank said that the visa itself performs the conversion and at what rates they do not know. The next morning I received a letter asking me to send them a copy of the statement of the latest transactions on the card, which will show the address specified when paying, so it’s better to indicate the Russian address, otherwise it’s hard to explain why you have Hong Kong address, and the operations take place in Russia, cards.

This is where the problems started. First of all, be prepared that Apple Asia responds to letters only at the beginning of the working day, i.e. at 4:30 Moscow time. Secondly, Sberbank, in principle, cannot issue card statements, only bank statement, and even there is no address on that one. In support, I could not answer, as I still get at least some statement on the card. Therefore, I sent them a note on the account, in Russian, with the address, name and card number entered by hand, confirmed by the seal, but this trick did not work. I received a letter written according to the same template with the same requirement. In response, I sent them a scan of the passport and the card with the 4 last open numbers explaining the situation. I wait for the day, and the answer comes, it contains something like the following: "Dear customer, we tried to write off the money, but we did not succeed, perhaps the card is blocked, contact the bank." A call to the bank, within 40 minutes, I still get to the person who can look at the requests for my card and get an answer that there was no attempt. Again, I am writing to Apple with a request to repeat the operation, but in response, again I receive a letter asking for an extract, but without the address and name, only the card number and the last operation. I began to search through the entire Sberbank online (online banking from Sberbank) and found a miracle that I could get a card statement (I wonder why the support does not know about this function).

After receiving the statement, I sent them a screenshot of the statement, which looks like this:

And in the morning I received a letter stating that all payments had passed and everything that I ordered would be sent separately.

How separately? We have an Individual Packages plan for Shipito!


In this there is nothing terrible your parcels will receive in any case and you can send them further separately, but if you want to merge them into one, it is enough to upgrade your plan to Virtual MailBox in this case. It will be possible to combine packages in a large box. We will turn to prices a little later, and now I will briefly tell you about the mechanism for preparing packages for shipment.

Having received the parcel, an e-mail will be sent with the information about the parcel - weight, dimensions, sender, etc. We are also reminded that you need to fill out a declaration before sending the parcel. To do this, go to your Shipito.com account and find there a link to the packages in stock (Packages in Warehouse), next to each package there is a Customs Declaration link, when you click on it, a window opens in which you need to fill in 3 fields - what is in box, I do not advise you to write that Apple’s technology is there, it’s better to just write a general Notebook, TabletPC, or Electronics at all, the quantity and cost in USD (the cost is better to indicate the real one, since in case of loss there will be some, albeit illusory, possibility get insurance), but if we are The host is slightly higher than the allowed customs limit (1000EUR), in order not to pay the duty, you can reduce it to an acceptable price. By the way, when filling out the declaration, the limit in dollars is indicated below, which I was very pleased with, although I was far from the limit.

If there are several packages, then the declaration must be completed for all. Further, if you have a Virtual MailBox plan, then in the section with packages there is a button >> Consolidate Pakages << clicking on which opens the next window

In the first section, you need to select the warehouse where our parcels are located. In the second - the shipment method, insurance, and what to do with the combined parcel. In the third we are given to choose one of the options of how to deal with boxes from the goods (A - leave everything as it is and put it in the box, B - get the contents from the parcel packages, but leave the boxes from the goods, C - throw out all the boxes and repack the goods) . In the fourth section, you need to choose which packages to combine and if you want to leave one box, for example, if the iPod comes in its original packaging and you don’t need the packaging from the case, you can also select this in the fourth section.

After filling in all the fields, click the submit button and wait until the letter drops from the mail that the parcel is collected and ready to be sent. After that, I personally had to fill in the declaration again and choose the shipping method, perhaps I chose the Hold option after packing, I don’t remember exactly. It is often advised to order the usual AirMail, instead of EMS, because I can get to customs and so on, now I don’t notice this problem, especially since the limits are not just like that, BookReaders from the USA quite often come with EMC problems, but in this case I chose the general mail, because from Hong Kong and so quickly come the parcels and I did not want to overpay for speed. When I did this procedure again, since the cost of delivery is considered to be manual (you can calculate it yourself at hongkongpost.hk there all the operations in HK $), then I waited about half an hour in my account and saw the full cost of Shipito services, I paid the missing amount and The next business day I received a letter stating that the parcel was sent with a tracking number.

Conclusion


In conclusion, I would like to give specific figures and my thoughts on what has been done. Let's start with the numbers, for which I paid:
Thus, in my case, the Apple iPad Case cost me HK $ 298 + ~ US $ 20, which clearly exceeds 1,500 rubles, for which you can buy this case from merchants at a local forum. For the rest, I believe that this purchase is very profitable and if it were not for the problems with Sberbank and the Apple Asia policy when responding to mail, then everything is quite simple and predictable.

And the timing:

As for the purchase in the Apple Store US, they write on the forums that they often receive the answer that Apple does not send parcels to the so-called international forwarder addresses, but orders pass from the second or third time. If you still decide to order there, then you probably want to use the services of the tax-free state, so please note that after receiving in Oregon, you will need to send a parcel to California, and only from there you can send to Russia, plus everything, many complain about the slowness of the office in Oregon , so it is probably more profitable to use the California address.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/115706/

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