Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

Robbie Dingeman’s research on ways to save money shipping to Hawaii in her article in Sunday’s Advertiser was a bit incomplete. I can add two more resources to it, anyway (I have no interest in any of them, and have personally used each).

These services are useful both when ordering from merchants who won’t ship to Hawaii at all, and for those many who insist on using expensive 2nd Day Air, which can cost as much or more than what you would like to buy from them.

The one service mentioned in the Advertiser article was Ship & Save. They re-ship by US Postal Service, as explained on their website. Although the website says you must have a PayPal account, if I recall correctly, I was able to pay via PayPal using a credit card without an account. The service charge is $6, and of course, you pay the outgoing postage. I don’t believe they have a postage calculator on the website.

A similar service is Aloha Forwarding. This is the one I have settled on for most small packages. Their handling fee is $4.95, about a dollar less than Ship & Save. They also can re-pack a shipment if doing so will save money, for a small charge. I was surprised one day to receive an email that they could repack one of my boxes for a $2 charge and it would go out for considerably less postage.

Aloha Forwarding re-ships using the US Postal Service and provides a shipping calculator on their website so you can see if you can save by using their service.

Ship to Hawaii is a freight consolidator. In other words, they will take your package and include it with others to make a larger shipment. It then goes by air to Hawaii, and you have to pick it up. The pick-up location is across Nimitz from Best Buy.

Clearly, this is not as good as having something delivered to your door. I’ve used them to ship a couple of large boxes, saving quite a bit. Most recently they handled a replacement computer. I also used them for something as small as an envelope. I think the total charge was $5, beating out the competition.

Ship to Hawaii requires an annual membership fee, and their website includes a handy calculator of the shipping costs. They also have an ocean freight service probably not useful to many of us. The staff at the pickup location were very helpful, even carrying the heavy box to my car.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 12/07/2009 11:30:00 AM