Operation "intermediary" or the delivery of goods from the United States - easier, safer, cheaper

We all know that most of the gadgets are cheaper to buy in the US than in our homeland, and this applies especially to various new products, the prices for which we simply fly to the skies! We all know that the most “delicious” offers on eBay and in US online stores usually have US only delivery and are therefore not available to us. In this article I will try to tell you about another way to correct this misunderstanding. Of course, all more or less experienced Internet buyers know about intermediaries who provide the mail forwarding service — that is, sending parcels. It happens this way - you order the delivery of the goods to the address in the USA, which the intermediary issued to you, he receives the parcel and sends it to you, taking a small commission for this. Known intermediaries are Shipito, Ebaytoday, Bandera, etc. There are a lot of them and they all offer a set of services - sending, combining several packages into one, on the contrary - dividing a large package into several small ones and so on. Usually they charge a fixed fee for each package + payment for additional services. The cost of the shipment itself is usually calculated at USPS tariffs and the same service sends the package to you. I want to tell you about another company - Meest.us , which delivers parcels (among various other services), but in principle its work has some interesting features.

I learned about the “Bridge” by chance, and to be honest, the first experience of using this intermediary was not very successful. As it turned out, this was entirely my mistake, but more on that later.
And so, as you can read on the site - this company began its activities as early as 1989, is engaged in shipping US goods to the CIS and back. Employees of the company speak Russian, ask a question and get those. support is available by calling 1 800 288 9949 (calls via Skype are free). As it turned out, this phone is the only adequate way to solve a problem if it arises, because by email I was answered for the third day and with standard answers like “see help”, and the support chat that is on the site is either offline or not answered at all =) By They answer the phone quickly, of course - you just have to take into account the time difference (UTC-5).
I will dwell on the main intricacies of working with this mediator. To begin with - you need to register on the page my.meest.us , during registration all data must be specified in English. After you have registered and made sure that you can log into your account on the site, order the delivery of goods to the address of the Most warehouse. On the box, the seller must indicate your name and surname (those that you indicated when registering on the site):

<Your name and surname>
641 Dowd Ave
Zoryana Meest-America, Inc.
Elizabeth New Jersey 07201
United States

If you buy on eBay - ask the seller to tell you the tracking number of the parcel, this is a very important point, that is why: Meest determines which package was sent to someone not by the mailbox number in the recipient address, but only by the tracking number that you enter in your account on the site . This has its advantages (some sellers do not send to PO boxes) and disadvantages - if the seller does not tell you the tracking number of the parcel - you will have to search for it manually, by the last name on the box, and this will delay sending the package to you.
And so the seller sent you a purchase, informed the number - you need to add this number to your account and wait. Do not just wait, but look at the tracking and account to find out when the parcel arrives at the warehouse - Most does not have a notification about this event. If the parcel was sent to you without tracking - you need to know the name and surname that the seller indicated on the parcel in the box sender and recipient, you need to enter this data on the site and when, according to your calculations, the parcel should already come to the warehouse - add your trackingless parcel to “Box” and send for sending, despite the fact that the status of the package is still “awaiting receipt”. It was in this place that I made a mistake during my first order, I waited a week for the status to change, until I thought of calling and asking. It turned out that such parcels without tracking their employees are wanted in the warehouse only after the customer orders their shipment.
So you can send several packages to the warehouse, combine them into one and send them to yourself. Combining is done very simply - several packages are dragged into one “box” on the website, for each “box” the address of the recipient and the transfer method are specified - by air faster but more expensive, by sea - cheaper but longer.

After you have created a “box” for sending from your packages, you can send them for packing and sending with the Send request button or request any additional actions with the Messages button (for example, ask to remove invoices from packages or additionally pack fragile things). Your parcels will be weighed, if necessary - repacked into one big box and will bill you for the shipment. The invoice can be paid directly from the card or through the Google Checkout payment system.
For more information about registering, adding and processing packages you can find out from the training video available on the website . It tells a pretty detailed story, only one drawback - it cannot be rewound, you have to patiently look everything in order.

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In my experience, shipping by Bridge is a bit cheaper than Shipito. So delivery of one phone to the shipito cost me $ 39.16, and the same phone through Meest was sent for $ 25. If you use package consolidation, the bridge turns out to be even more profitable, since at Shipito you have to pay $ 10 per month for the combination service and for sending the combined package from two phones I had to pay $ 50, and the same two phones sent through the bridge cost only $ 27.
Another huge plus of the Bridge is that the company can take over the customs clearance of your parcels if their declared value exceeds the duty-free limit, and on fairly favorable terms. I honestly do not fully understand how they do it, but they are clearing the parcels at 10% of their value, whereas as we say at the customs of Ukraine, I would have to pay about 40%. In any case, I have already experienced this functionality, and everything went fine with me, the package with the declared value of $ 500 successfully came to me and I paid for sending it $ 75, including customs clearance.
And finally, there remained another trump card of the Bridge - they do not use postal services to deliver parcels, so the probability of theft or loss of the parcel tends to zero. The package is delivered by plane to Europe to the intermediate warehouse, and from there it is delivered to you by courier service (in Ukraine, Mosan’s partner is Rosan ) and the courier brings the package directly to your home at your convenient time, having phoned beforehand. And if the last 2 parcels sent by mail were opened at customs, the packaging was torn, it is clear that someone was rummaging in them, then the parcels delivered through Most were not damaged. The delivery time for my package was approximately two weeks from the day it was sent from a warehouse in the USA.
Thus, I can recommend delivery through the Bridge of both expensive / large / heavy parcels, as well as several small ones, since when combined, the shipping price increases slightly.