Delivery from the USA in 5-10 days at the price of USPS

Before the onset of 2013, there were 30 days left when I decided to present my wife with an ipad mini. The official store.apple.com was unable to cope with the demand for mini, as the inscription est shipping in 2 weeks eloquently showed.

There was no desire to refuse mini as a gift, so ebay was taken by assault, prices for which grew noticeably, and the 16gb + cellurar model went for $ 500.

Before 2013, there were 15 days left, I had a won lot and a vague prospect of getting it in St. Petersburg before the 31st ...
And I received it, in 10 days, the shipping rate was $ 48.5.

When Russian Post is small

How can I get a parcel from the USA in 10 days? Send it to USPS Express? Well, if you are lucky enough, then yes, but not on Christmas and New Year's Eve, when the monthly delivery period is considered to be quite an express, and the two-week period is a miracle. How to send one ipad in a package without drowning it in a pile of junk, wrapping it with films and pasting the seams of the security box with tape and being sure that the postman student will not be sitting with your mini-guy?
')
There were more questions than answers until I decided to look into the mail-forwarders folder, where I have all the email announcements from well-known mail intermediaries.

Among the heaps of mailings with announcements of New Year's sales, I fished out a letter from shopfans, in which the launch of a new delivery method, Shopfans Express, was announced. Description promised

• unprecedented speed of delivery (10 ± 2 days, and sometimes all 5);
  
• lack of contact with the Post of Russia on the whole route;
• almost a guarantee of delivery safe and sound;
• no restrictions on the size of the package (understand that the USPS has a limit of 108 "by the parameter combined girth).

It was more like a good charge of marketing bulshit, but still it seemed like the only opportunity to theoretically get the post on time, and I decided to take a chance.

Signing a contract

The essence of the shopfans express method and its difference from the good old USPS is that your package will not touch USPS / Russian Post channels in any way, which means it will not fall into the hands of greedy employees in sorting.

But in order to avoid Russian Post, you will have to formalize your relationship with a carrier, which in this case is a kind of OOO Cargokast, you will need to reveal your anonymity by the following actions:

• Download a copy of your passport
• Sign a bilateral agreement with OOO Cargokast, scan the last sheet with a signature and download it

In a detailed way, all the steps are described in the instructions from the company itself, besides there is a whole 100 page thread on the forum, where there is a lively discussion of this method, many details and answers to the questions can be found there.
Yes, you either disclose your anonymity, or disclose the anonymity of someone who does not care about her so much =)

I had no illusions about my anonymity, so there were no problems with my passport, but then another trouble awaited me. All these buns in terms of speed of delivery, etc., and so on, are still available only to Muscovites and those living in its area. I, as a native of the northern capital, had no choice but to seek a contact in Moscow, who would receive a departure for me. In the end, I took someone else's scan of the passport, asked to sign a contract and downloaded these documents.

A few hours later my documents were reviewed and accepted, and I received an email notification.

Accurate and on time

I sent my package on December 14:


It cost me $ 70.55, while next time I will not order insurance, because the forum never managed to find messages even about dented packages, not to mention the thefts. Wrapping the contents in the package also did not make much sense, in the case of transporting large investments, the risk that it would fall through the hole in the box is negligible. Therefore, it was quite realistic to manage only the shipping tariff and the cost of the warehouse services, which would be only $ 51.5.

This shipping method still has one flaw that needs to be fixed by the end of January - there is no track of the departure number, so in order to track your departure you will have to look at the following schedule, the current version of which is on the shopfans website :

SF-Out - sent from a Shopfans warehouse
US-Out - departed from New York
MOW - flew to Moscow
Customs - left the customs
Courier - transferred to couriers
Delivered - 99% of recipients delivered

The party in which my package was also got into the holiday vise: they canceled the flight on which they had to load the pallets with cargo, so they had to wait for the next one. As a result, on December 19, the parcels were loaded on board, and on December 24, 12, the courier called my contact in Moscow an hour before delivery and successfully delivered the goods. Thus, the total delivery time from the warehouse to the addressee in Moscow was 10 days, and this in view of the unintended delay due to the cancellation of the flight.

upd

Since February 2013, the shopfans express method is available for residents of St. Petersburg.

PS

1) There is another delivery method that is capable of delivering at the speed of delivery with the shopfans express - this is the SPSR , but they work without a personal account (only correspondence in the mail), it is very slow, and sending them during the New Year period is stuck in Europe, which caused a delay to 15 days, judging by the reviews on ixbt. They also require a passport, so I did not notice any advantages from them.

2) from January 27, USPS plannedly increases tariffs for priority and express, I tabulated old and new tariffs, and also added SF-Express tariffs there for comparison

3) a blog dedicated to the delivery of goods from the United States with reviews and instructions.

4) for those who do not tolerate couriers, the option of self- pickup of parcels from a warehouse in Moscow is available.

5) insurance covers any trouble with the package, whether it is force majeure or damage to the goods during transportation

6) at the moment sending is carried out on Tuesdays and Fridays, consider this when calculating the delivery time.

7) documents that require the signature of the recipient: the contract , letter of guarantee .

Successful purchases and fast deliveries!