Limiting baggage by mailing

The cost depends on the country from which you are mailing from. We have mailed parcels from Scotland, Germany, and Ukraine (that was an experience). The cost is very high from Scotland and Germany. Speaking from experience I can tell you that if you buy something with a credit card and the shop will mail for you the cost of mailing about equals the VAT tax you won't have to pay. Post offices in Europe have everything you need to mail a parcel. Just find the post office, go buy a box and tape, take them back to your hotel, pack the parcel, and go back to the post office and mail it. The last package we sent from Germany two years ago weighed about ten pounds and cost about 80euros. That's a lot! The parcel we sent from Ukraine contained three antique plates. They were well packed with bubble wrap and arrived home in a timely manner and were in perfect condition. There are some people here who have had awful experiences mailing things from other countries, but aside from the high cost, we have always been successful.

A few times I have shipped flat-rate packages to myself while traveling in the States. This is to keep myself to carry-on status and to relieve myself of non-essential items. A medium size package was about $13 recently.

Queenie, It will depend on what is a "good idea" to you in terms of $$$$ for shipping. If you know where you are going try looking/googling that countries postal service and browse their web site for shipping cost to the USA. on my recent trip i sent home packages from each country and i was able to lighten my load alot. I took my horseback riding clothes with me too and when i was done with it, sent it back home since it was taking up alot of valuable space. i also bought a travel scale on my trip last year so i can weigh the stuff im sending to get an idea on costs. almost all of the countries still used plastic bags so i was able to put the stuff to be shipped into the bag and use my handy scale to weight it. for my trip this year i knew where i was going so i looked up and tabulated the cost vs weight (up to 5 kilos ~ 10 lbs) to send stuff back home for each country i visited. that way i had a good estimate on how much i would spend and where the price break/increase would be for the increase in weight. just one note. If youre not flying around alot and using the trains, you can take that stuff with you. only drawback is that its useless luggage. i used alot of trains on my last trip but i didnt want to carry 6 boxes of stuff around. if you decide to do this here are some hints. they work for me and you may come up with other stuff too. I printed out shipping labels at home with my home address. Even thought they were covered over by the shipping paperwork, i put one on the inside too.

I also bought, once over there, a roll of the clear shipping/label tape (2" wide) and used that throughout my trip. once done shipping what was left of the roll i left it at my last stop. the roll doesnt take alot of space either. I also brought along a permanent black felt marker to mark my boxes "USA" even if it was on the label. Any of the plastic bags were used to wrap and protect the goods from rubbing during transit. I used the shipping to ship my Rick Steves books home once i was done with them along with any brochers from each place. for what it worth, all/most of the packages too about 1 week to make it back home and that was using the non express/rush service. happy trails.

Extra baggage fees will almost always be less than the cost of shipping. But you then have to carry your purchases around with you. So sometimes it is worthwhile to ship things home. And as noted, you can save the VAT if a merchant ships an item for you. Regular post shipping will be cheaper than express agencies like UPS and FedEx. But you'll often have to box it yourself and some country's post offices are less reliable than others. In many Post Offices, English is not spoken. If it's valuable, you'll need to ship it via one of the express agencies and buy the insurance. Places like Mailboxes Etc will box it all up for you very well. But all that comes at a very steep cost. About the only thing I ship are books I buy (I buy a lot of books). Those get very heavy to lug around. But they are also expensive to ship...

It's not cheap but I have done it several times, mostly books. One thing I do to lighten the load is throw old clothes away as I go. I never bring back toiletries like soap, toothpaste, etc. If you are buying large souvenirs, sometimes the seller can get a better mailing rate. Avoid express shipping. You still must declare anything you've bought and shipped back, not just what's in your baggage.

You can't use shipping to yourself to avoid duty. Any person on here who suggested ways to evade the law would be violating a core guideline and risk expulsion. Being caught attempting to avoid duty would carry stiff penalties.

"I'm curious as to the logistics once your 20 pound package arrived in the states. How does a South Korean post office pay an American entity less than what the Americans would charge to deliver it within the states?" Can only assume that the cost paid to South Korea shipping service includes cost to get it to it's final destination. Since OP is in Honolulu and pkg came by boat, maybe cost was just to deliver it to port and she picked it up there.

I'm pretty sure that each country honors each other's postal rates no matter what they are. That's been my experience. The package we sent from Ukraine went from Kolomiya to our home for less than we could have sent it across the U.S. The same thing happened with post cards. I seem to remember there is some sort of international postal union that makes this possible.

You're right Monte, it's the Univeral Postal Union and it's headquartered in Bern Switzerland.