February 13, 2016
We found a pretty good way to get parts and goodies to NZ – You Shop by the New Zealand post office.
We normally use a mail service in the States called St. Brendan’s Isle, but they seem to have some kind of special pricing arrangements with UPS, FedEx and DHL where they are charged about five times the going rate!
Enter You Shop. You sign up for free and get an address in the States, England and China. Have your orders sent to the appropriate address and You Shop consolidates your shipment and delivers it to NZ at a very reasonable price.
Down Side (or Upside?):
FedEx, DHL and UPS handle customs clearance for you. You Shop doesn’t. But You Shop also doesn’t charge you for handling the customs clearance like the others do – usually about $50. We had to go to our local customs office, present invoices for the items, along with a copy of our Temporary Import Exemption form. There was no fee as most items were for the boat and those that were not didn’t total more than $400 in value. Doing the clearance ourselves was just as fast, or faster than having one of the big three do it.
You Shop has a very good website that is totally functional (kind of rare these days). The communications were excellent as they kept us up to date with the status of our package throughout the entire process. I have no complaints and only praise for the service. -Rich
By the way, for big stuff, look into Kiwi Shipping. We’ve never used them but we’ve heard good things about their service.
