HopShopGo Review
I was interested in a few books from Amazon and found that if I bought them in used condition I would save even more. One particular book I was interested in was a Psychology
book that was priced at $0.75 for a previous edition vs a new edition ($125).As I understand correctly, Amazon is able to ship to Malaysia direct. The problem is that most (if not all) used books do not ship to Malaysia. This is where the dilemma comes in. Should I buy a new book for 125x the used price and get amazon to ship to me directly? or should I use a forwarder?
DECIDING ON A FORWARDER
Which forwarder to choose? I took a look at the following forwarders:- Borderlinx
- HopShopGo
- VPost
I haven't used Borderlinx but I had to deal with their customer service before when I had problems with my account and it was horrible. Pricing wise they are also the most expensive.
Now, HopShopGo was a new name for me, having only heard of it a year ago. Further checking revealed that this was ComGateway also a famous forwarder. Seems after partnering up with paypal, they were renamed?
Anyway after performing some calculations, hopshopgo ended up as the cheapest and being a paypal user, there was an additional 10% discount.
This is how HopShopGo came into the picture. I did a rough calculation and found that there would be some savings. A comparison of the savings will be shown later below.
Amazon Prime
During payment I was prompted to subscribe for a trial of an Amazon Prime account to enable faster shipping and more. Read more about it on amazon
Amazon Prime account. I subscribed for a trial of Amazon prime to get free and faster shipping. Having an amazon prime account lets you purchase products and get them delivered for free (within US) via 2 day shipping!!
Good and bad,
The good? I get to save some local shipping money and get speedy delivery.
The bad? I ended up purchasing more items from Amazon hehe..
COMPARISON DIRECT SHIPPING VS HOPSHOPGO
Comparison of Amazon direct shipping vs hopshopgo vs buying locallyAmazon with direct shipping:
Cost of books: $222.79 (All new books)
Cost of postage: $4.99 + (6 x $4.99) = $34.93
Total cost: $257.72
Amazon with hopshopgo:
Cost of books: $77.79 (Some new, some used)
Cost of postage: $65.87
Total cost: $143.66
Buying locally:
Not applicable some of the books I want to purchase were not sold locally.
hopshopgo clearly wins in this case. But then again this was because one particular book was not available locally and that I purchase some books used. You would probably have to do your own calculations each time you buy to see if it would be worth to use a forwarder.
Listed below is the hopshopgo invoice. As you can see, half of my cost went into shipping even after the 10% discount for using paypal.
Shipping Times
Previous direct amazon shipments took between 3-4 weeks to arrive in Malaysia and was delivered by a regular postman.Hopshopgo ships using DHL (at the time of writing). This allowed me to receive my books in 1 week and of course allowed me to track my parcel which I used few times a day everyday :p
WARNING
Minimum Charges
Hopshopgo has a minimum weight charge of 1kg per package. This means if hopshopgo receives a package that is 300gms, you would be charged for 1kg minimum. In my case I had 4 separate packages sent out from Amazon. Some of the packages weighed less than 1kg, and I was charged the 1kg minimum. Packages weight more than 1kg will be rounded up to the nearest 0.5kg. eg. a 1.2kg package will be charged as a 1.5kg package.
Volumetric Weight
Remember, hopshopgo charges by physical weight or volumetric weight (ie. dimensions of the box) which ever is bigger. This means that if amazon sends ur item in a huge box, your postage via hopshopgo is gonna be a bomb. Of course, hopshopgo has a service where they can help you to repack the box to save you some money for a price ($10 at time of writing).Package Consolidation
Consolidation of the first 3 packages are free, while the next items will cost $1 each. Reasonable.Storage
Remember not to keep your packages at hopshopgo too long as they only hold your package for 30 days for free. Every extra day will cost you $1 per package per day!THE EXPERIENCE
Overall the page is quite user friendly with a simple interface.
It has an online customer support that I used when I was unable to track the status of my packages.
I find it good if you forward large and heavy packages. This is due to their minimum package weight charges which turns against you if you have a lot of light packages. Also, beware of ordering items with large package sizes. If ordering from amazon, always check the product dimensions and calculate the volumentric weight before deciding.
Comments
Since we don't know what is the weight of the book, we only can know the final price once the book arrived at HSG US address, right?
yes that is correct. But normally I would check for the weight of the book either by searching on google or some websites like amazon which has shipping weight information on most books
(i also wondering, if we don't deliver anything for two years to the address.. do we have to regenerate new address later on? is the US address is just a postbox or a people house or something. how do they know if the parcel belongs to HSG subscriber or not) - i am worried if I suddenly send something to the parcel address, HSG is not aware that I send something.
is the address being shared with someone else.. that's also a wonder to me.
As far as I know, it looks like they have been using the same address all these while. Basically everybody has the same address, and they add on some account information to the address. You can check your HSG address there should be one line that looks like "C/O XXX-XXX".
I guess there are some people at the address that will sort the parcels and update the HSG account info :)
I hope you screen the posts before they post on your blog because I dont want to shamelessly advertise on your site. I own www.fastship2u.com. We are another forwarding company and would love if you would check us out and let us know how we compare as well. Thanks!