I have the unfortunate predicament of loving vintage drums (ludwig in particular) and living in australia. The market in australia for vintage drums is pretty much bone dry. There's a few things here and there every now and again but they're normally pretty damn expensive.
So i usually buy my drums from america and ship them over to me. So i wanted to review my experience with www.shipito.com to hopefully save some other australians the hassle.
So shipito has a service that allows you to send packages anywhere from america to them, then they'll forwad it on to you. good idea, and works pretty well. They also have pretty low shipping rates. For example, to ship an early 60's 22" 12" 14" 16" ludwig kit with shipito was gonna cost $676 (that's seriously just a price australians have to pay) whereas other freight forwarding companies were around $750. So it all seems pretty good at first
Problem is, I have to pay shipping to their warehouse, which was $250.
Then because the drums are big (a 30" x 30" x 30" package) you have to pay a $32 dollar fee. If you want insurance with the package, you have to get photos taken first, that costs $5. Because the shipping is so high you have to verify your account, that means uploading documents, sending, scanning blah blah blah: pain in the backside. But my spending limit is $540 dollars, but the shipping is $676. Uh oh. That means i have to "wire" them money. There's a bank fee of $22 dollars. They also charge me $10 to recieve a wire transfer. Its also an additional $1 every day the package is in their warehouse because its so big. Wire transfers take 5 business days. So thats $7.
So what originally looked good meant:
676(shipping) + 250(shipping to warehouse) + 32(size fee) + 5(photo fee) + 22(bank fee) + 10(bank fee) + 7(time fee) = $1,002
I wish i went with another freight forwarding company :((((((((((((((( jeez louise, even USPS would have been cheaper