Shipping from Paris to USA

I think that you will find that shipping costs will exceed to value of any souvenirs you may have purchased. Consider picking up an extra suitcase and paying any supplement baggage charges you may incur.

Yes, international shipping is very expensive. If at all possible, you'll do better to take your purchases with you on the plane. That will also save the time you would otherwise spend, locating appropriate shipping materials, packing things up and taking them tonthe shipping point (which is not always just any old post office; and how's your French?). Consider ditching partial bottles of cheap toiletries, etc., because replacing them will be a lot less expensive than paying the shipping cost to get your souvenirs home from France. If you went carry-on to Europe, plan to check a bag on the way back and buy something cheap and capacious (like a nylon gym bag) to use as a carry-on, stuffed with some of your purchases.

Shipping from Europe is most practical if you've bought expensive items and can have the reliable merchant ship them home for you. That way, you can take advantage of the VAT-avoidance scheme, and the money you save by not paying VAT covers the shipping cost. But note my use of "reliable". There are some crooked merchants out there.

I've shipped stuff from Europe to the US many times and the costs are reasonable, in the $20-$50 range. Stop by the post office and see what it will cost. The French clerk who helped me last time was far more polite than what I normally see in a US post office.

Unless your souvenirs exceed the weight limit on a piece of checked luggage, or its too bulky, it would likely be cheaper and less hassle to buy a cheap duffle and check it for the trip home. Or just get a sturdy cardboard box and check that.

We used to ship work-related materials on an expense account. It’s very expensive, about 48 euros last time we did it for a box, max weight 10 kilos. There are three sizes of boxes at La Poste, designated for overseas shipping and everything goes very quickly by air. No more boat rate shipping.

We shipped things home before an onward trip to Spain one year using the postal 'colisimo' box; it cost about 40 Euro. What we now do is always bring a cheap duffle that folds down small -- we then carry that on with clothing, laundry etc and pack new purchases in the suitcase that is checked. In economy you can check one bag, carry on one bag and a personal item. If you didn't bring an expansion bag, you can pick up something in Paris at the ubiquitous junk stores (don't know what they are called but they sell cheap housewares, shopping totes, umbrellas, and cheap luggage and you see them all over with the cheap luggage displayed out front). We once bought a small roller bag for a side trip where we didn't want to carry our luggage for about 10 Euro. But if you want to pay the cost, the post office has these single price boxes and if you are lucky there will be someone able to help you with it. I seem to recall I had to buy and bring my own tape, but that may be confused with somewhere else.

The open air markets may be a good place to look for a duffle style bag that can be checked as additional baggage.

I've only done it once, from Italy, when I was traveling with the whole family. I bought a duffle from a street vendor. We all had carry-on bags so the one checked bag didn't cost any extra. We put all the fragile stuff in our carry-ons, then used our clothes as packing material for the checked bag.

If you went carry-on to Europe, plan to check a bag on the way back

That's exactly what we do now. A lot of it is to bring liquids back; mostly wine. We once shipped a couple of bottles of walnut oil home, and besides the long wait at La Poste, the shipping cost was more than the oil cost.

I agree with the others in terms of buying an extra duffle or bag.
Having said this, we did send a package from France two years ago, because we didn’t want to lug around the extra weight, since it was the beginning of our three week trip.

As Bet has mentioned, the post office ( La Poste) provides boxes for international shipping. You have to bring the stuff you intend to mail and pack it there, then someone will help you fill out the forms for customs. The box we sent was just a bit larger than a shoe box. There was a weight limit but our stuff weighed about 5-6 Kilograms, and the cost was about €54.

If you’re interested in sending a large package, you’re better off sending it via ‘Mail Boxes, Etc.’, but again, it won’t be cheap.

Enjoy the rest of your trip!

Edited to add...
BTW, both packages (one sent via FedEx by Mail Boxes, Etc, from the UK, and the other from La Poste from France) arrived to our home in 4 -5 days.

Just did this same thing from France a month ago. I even went by to see Fed Ex before we left and they said my account would take care of me shipping by Fed Ex a package from their office-near the Opera House- from Paris......so we trekked there one morning while in Paris and it was going to cost me $300....!!!!! And we had bottles of mustard, jelly, other various goodies from the French grocery stores. Plan B.....walked all over the Opera neighborhood trying to find UPS and never could find it.......Plan C, which has always seemed to be what we fall back on- Take or buy a cheap collapsible bag and stuff it with your dirty clothes, underwear ( I have even been known to throw away old underwear that I purposely take to ditch to help make space!).....take your treasures and fill your now vacant suitcase with them, wrapping them in socks, t-shirts. A lot of your souvenirs are over 3 ounces and cannot be in your carry on anyway.......this last plan always seems to see us through. We did purchase on this last trip pottery and a painting that were shipped by the sellers to us.
Hope this helps!!!!

Another vote for packing your souvenirs in your (sturdy, hard-sided) checked bag, cushioned with clothing, and carrying on a (packable or purchased-there) tote/duffle filled with what doesn't fit in the checked bag. Works best if you can plan to buy the heavy stuff at your last location before heading home. (We do a big Monoprix run in Paris for Nivea cream and other toiletries.)

My only experience shipping back to the US was when I visited friends outside of Dortmund a few years ago. I bought a box at some 1€ store, sealed up what I wanted to ship (shampoo/condtioner I could not get in the US) and went to the local Deutsche Post in the small town in which our friends live. The shipping cost under €20. I didn't need the package immediately so I selected the slowest shipping option which I believe was about 4 weeks. They actually unsealed it to see what was in the box and then re-taped it.

I can't speak for Paris but assuming you're not shipping home skis, poles and boots, you might find shipping from the local post office (La Poste?) could work for you.

Note that anyone who shipped boxes from France to the States before Jan 1 2016 enjoyed a different pricing scheme - since which time it has become prohibitively expensive to ship anything that exceeds three centimeters in depth that can be packed in a padded envelope. It used to be pretty costly to ship stuff to the States -- now it's egregiously expensive. I don't know why they changed their rules in this way, but it has meant, for me, an almost complete stoppage to mailing things home. I just pay for an extra suitcase - much better value for money - i.e. you can pack a lot more in an extra suitcase than you can get in a small box.

I might just add that the extreme cost for mailing things to another country works both ways. I have a son and grand daughter in Belgium, and I really need to be careful in choosing presents. A few doll clothes for the young lady's birthday cost over $56 usd recently. It almost doubled the cost of the present. :-(

Many thanks to all who have replied to my question re. shipping. The preponderance of responses recommended using an extra checked bag for the air travel and I will use that method. We are staying at hotel Relais Bosquet in the Rue Cler area of Paris and I have found a valise sales store on Ave Rue Cler that has a very affordable (<20€) duffel that I will use. Icing to this cake is that due to our frequent flier status, we each get two checked bags at no extra charge but only brought three. So, voila, shipping for only the cost of the duffel. Thanks again for getting me onto the best track.

The problem with souvenirs is that they accumulate with undaunted speed. One day you are lithely moving from Metro station to RER train to museum to bistro, and on the next, you are lugging an extra bag up an escalator as you juggle a baguette and a glass of vin rouge while trying to read your map. This becomes a problem if you want to travel to another city, as your weight/comfort ratio becomes lopsided.

One remedy that worked for me was to find branches of a Mailboxes, Etc. in various cities through which I traveled. Nice has at least one, as do Florence, Rome, and Naples, and Barcelona has several (although they weren't open when I tried to use them--Spain is different than many other places), and evidently Paris has one, too.

They provide boxes, customs declarations, and modest prices for shipment of "stuff" back to the U.S. I have done the checked bag routine, as well, but prefer the shipment method of divesting myself of 20+Kg of really neat souvenirs.

I am glad you have your solution.

Like wbfey1 we often ship things back mid trip. It may not be cheap, but if we have more stops to make before we fly home, at least we do not have to schlep the items all over the continent. Mailboxes Etc. has been excellent, but we also found the Paris post office near Rue Cler to give great service and the cost of shipping from France was far better than from Italy.

For others reading this in future, sometimes it’s worth 50€ to divest yourself of weight for the balance of your trip by shipping how acquisitions and even items you no longer need. For example, we have shipped home trekking sticks and hiking boots after our mountain stays whe the rest of our trip is city based.

Very few, if any, of the things I have bought in Europe would have been purchased if they had to pass my "is it worth paying to ship this home" test. But the equation would be very different if I were buying designer accessories or high-end crafts.

wbfey1/Laurel/Others -
Desperately looking for some pointers about shipping a carry-on suitcase (approx. 10kgs or 22lbs) from Paris to San Francisco. Some one took it by accident from Interlaken in Switzerland 10 days back and now the post office in Paris is saying that they can't ship it because it has a macbook. Apparently batteries are not allowed and my suitcase is locked.
Any pointers or tips?
Thanks a lot.

Anybody you know flying Paris>SFO and willing to check their own bag and carry on yours ? (you would pay the bag charge, of course.)

Thanks Laura! That's a great tip. One of my colleague is visiting Paris for the Holidays with his family and I might ask him. I am also comfortable giving him the lock code for my suitcase.
Will also see if anyone else I know is going there.

All laptops have lithium ion batteries that need to be declared, even if packed in equipment... that's why the post office won't want it. DHL Express or other courier services, though, will ship, if finding someone else to haul it as their suitcase won't work.