Shipping Laptop Overseas

[house kitten]

I have a laptop that I wish to ship to Spain. I have tried pricing the shipping by way of USPS and come up with about $75 for an 11 pound package. UPS and FedEx are both around $255-275. Is that right? Are there any other ways I could price this out with lower shipping?

[TuuS]

That sounds about right. With something that heavy you might want to look at a priority flatrate box, but if this laptop is worth more then $100-200, then I'd go with express mail, it doesn't cost that much more and the insurance is a lot cheaper. When you hit a value of about $600 the prices are about equal, higher value items are even cheaper with express because the insurance is cheaper.

There are ways to ship items as frieght, in which case it would get sealed in a shipping container and spend a couple weeks at sea. The salt water in the air is hard on laptops and you may end up with hundreds of pounds of freight piled on top of it, so it may arrived badly broken so you really don't want to ship a laptop that way.

Shipping it airmail via usps is about the cheapest method available. If it was under 4lbs there would be a cheaper option, via first class international, but they offer no insurance or tracking, so it's only advisable on items of low value.

Basically, the options you have are the only reasonable ones available.


However, if you want to ship it very cheap to china, have the person in china send you a box with 11lbs of bricks in it, open it carefully, remove the bricks and reseal it with the laptop and mark it as "refused" and "return to sender", and usps will ship it back. The total cost would probably be under $20 lol although this is meant to be humorous, it really would work since china subsidizes exports, a really unfair business practice making it impossible for other countries to complete on global trade. In many cases you can ship something from china to usa cheaper then you can ship something across town in usa.


ps. The marketplace probably isn't the best place for this post, since you aren't buying or selling, but it is a good location to find the opinions of those who do this regularly, but a staff member may want to move it at some point.

[house kitten]

Thanks. I may be able to get it down a bit in weight but anything I try up to 8 pounds is roughly the same charge.

[jronald]

Not the right forum but:
https://www.usps.com/ship/priority-mail ... tional.htm
FlaT Rate Small Box was $17.00 to just outside of London.

If I had to do it, this is how I would.

Ron

[Neil]

If it's a full size laptop that won't fit in a small flat rate box, the medium flat rate box is what I always use. About $35 last time I checked to most European countries.

[TuuS]

The small flatrate box won't even fit a battery in many cases... but you can use a large video box, then stuff that inside a flat rate envelope and get it for $17... big enough for about 3-4 batteries max, but not even the tiniest laptop would come close to fitting.

The medium flat rate box will fit a small laptop, but not if you want it packed safely, and not with additional items like ac adapter. A 15.4" laptop would never fit under any conditions, a 14" (non widescreen) would just barely fit. For a flatrate box you'd want the large "gameboard" box. It will fit a large laptop and accessories like ac adapter, batteries, etc, and you'll have room for a couple inches of padding on the edges to protect the laptop.


The large flatrate box or 11lb package (priority mail) is $61, $650 insurance is $11, total $72 (7-10 days)

Express mail (11 lbs) would be $75 and insurance $4 total $79 (3-5 days)

If you want the best odds of it getting there intact, go express. They spend less time sitting around, always loaded and unloaded first. The more a package sits in depot, the more chance it can get damaged or misdirected.

All prices are rounded to whole dollars

[TuuS]

Thanks. I may be able to get it down a bit in weight but anything I try up to 8 pounds is roughly the same charge.

Please don't make new topics to reply to your own topic. Hopefully a moderator can merge the two topics, then move them to a more appropriate section.

My advice is to worry more about packing it safely, you're not going to get it shipped cheap when it has to go on an airplane, and shipping with an ocean freight company is only a good idea if you have a large amount to ship, usually by the pallet load. In the laptop liquidation business, we often ship hundreds of smashed damaged and abused laptops to china. They all get packed into pallets and shipped in large shipping containers. This is the only cheap way to ship heavy objects, but you'd have to find a company that offers shared containers and you might have to have the person in spain pick it up at port. It's definitely not a good idea for a laptop and I wouldn't even know where to go to arrange such a shipment. If it's an old laptop of little value, then ship it in a large flatrate box with lots of packing material. Weight won't matter so you can reinforce the box on the inside with cardboard, foam rubber, etc... I usually put the laptop itself in a smaller priority mail box and slide that inside the large box.