You must be wondering if there is anything worth buying from Germany. Well, not for me, but my wife has tried and would like to continue using some German branded beauty products. As with products from China and USA, you get lower prices if you source from the source. Even when the shipping cost is significantly higher for Germany as compared to shipping from China and USA.
I learnt quite a few things from this maiden attempt to ship stuff from Germany to Singapore, and i’m sure there is an obscure chance that my experience will be helpful to some people.
First of all, there are not many choices when it comes to the parcel forwarding service provider. There are practically only three – vpost, myGermany and mailboxde. The first two are prohibitively expensive, so you can toss them out the window. Mailboxde has reasonable shipping rates because they offer shipping via Deutsche Post (the German equivalent of SingPost). In terms of volumetric weight, i think the allowance is quite generous, whereby the acceptable dimensions for a small package is Length + Height + Width < 90cm. Both the fairly large parcels i shipped were considered small packages. At 9.81 Eur ($15) each, it was very much within reason.
I discovered that online shopping in Germany is fairly easy for foreigners not residing in Germany. PayPal is commonly accepted at all online shops. Google translate mitigates the language barrier completely. I was also able to pick the online shop with the lowest price (with free domestic shipping) through an aggregator site. All in all, easy peasy.
I guess it is worthwhile buying light and non-bulky items such as beauty products from Germany, but not much else. Shipping cost seems to increase exponentially with higher weight and volume. Anyway, Germans are innovative, and i would have been quite interested to explore buying German products if not for the high shipping cost.
One of the parcels I received came attached with a catalogue of Daiso-esque products. I thought would be interesting to show you the following excerpts, some of which i found rather quirky.
Update: Amazon.de ships direct to Singapore. While shipping isn’t cheap (i guesstimate that it is somewhere around 20% more than if you shipped via mailboxde), you do get the tax deducted price (a whopping 16%), which in my opinion more than makes up for the higher shipping cost. I might just buy via Amazon.de exclusively from now on.
Silicone plate with an opening to capture froth from a boiling pot, or flipped over a frying pan for simmering while frying.
Tea aromatic infuser
Rodent trap. We could use this in Singapore. I saw a rat running around my HDB estate this morning.
Some feminine products
True German style Christmas ornament
Hi Yen Kai,
I am Chris, founder of myGermany.com. Just saw that article here. I would like to let you know that we have not only reduced our prices, but much more of interest is: myGermany takes time and a) takes new stable and more suitable strong 2-wavy packaging, and b) we reduce all packages automatically. And all is included in our costs already (mygermany.com/shipping-cost-calculator/). We do not charge extra as our competitors. Please check here:
mygermany.com/#warehousevideo
That means, your comparison is not fair at all, as you have compared apples with peaches – as a German saying states 🙂
If you want and it is still of interest I am happy to explain more about it!?
Best regards,
Chris
Hi Chris. Thanks for leaving a comment. I just did an estimated cost calulation using the cost calculator on myGermany.com website, whereby i estimated the size of the box as pictured in my blog post to have the dimensions 20cm X 20cm X 30cm. I don’t remember the exact dimensions but i think it is not too far off. The estimated shipping cost is 35 Euros or more, whereas i shipped it for about 10 Euros. There is no need to reduce the package size because it costs more (labour cost) to reduce the size than to ship it as is. I don’t need Fedex or DHL. Deutsche Post is good enough for me. All i need is reliability and low cost.
Chris,
I read many good reviews of myGermany.com but since I register with you and paid the 1Euro more than a week ago, there is ZERO response from your team and nobody answer any of my queries. Is your service still available or you have close down?
KK
Beware, MyGermany has the worst customer service, is expensive, slow and if you choose the DHL service they do not deliver to your doorstep.
Use another service, cheaper, quicker and less headaches.
Hi yenkai,
can you share the weight and dimension of the 2 boxes?
tks
Ade
Hi Adeline, these were the dimensions captured by mailboxde.com:
0.31 × 0.18 × 0.12 m 0.28 kg
0.24 × 0.2 × 0.14 m 0.24 kg
I suggest you ship slightly more per parcel to get better value. My latest parcel was 0.24 × 0.18 × 0.16m 0.48 kg and it cost 10.06 Euros.
I also suggest you all not to go with MyGermany. First as someone commented earlier “No response at all”. Second incase if you use that and ship package to them. They put some lame excuse saying the invoice is not there and will ask customer to send a lot of documents which goes like this ..
” – copy of the invoice as proof that you have payed for the items, needs to include a proof that the billing address is your actual address and not our myGermany address
– a copy of your ID
– proof of your identity: e.g. credit card statement or phone invoice
credit card / paypal information which you have used to pay your items
– In case of credit card payment: provide an proof where we see with which credit card you have paid the item!!!!
– in case of eBay purchase: screenshots of all eBay transaction stating you as the buyer and payer!!!”
Yes, for a parcel forwarding company all these documents. Please note I am using their service to forward it to Europe only. I will never ever recommend any one of you to get MyGermany. Its ridiculous and you would be better of paying a little bit more and get something from your own place.