Parcel Companies - Any Reccomendations

I’m sending bottles to Germany as part of the EU Local Swap. Anybody got recommendations for parcel companies or just the Post Office?

I need to check which I used when I sold a load of books on E-Bay. Guess I’ll have to stand on the bathroom scales with and without the boxes.

Ipostparcels is cheap, however check if you will be covered for damaged bottles.

I’ve used Parcels2Go. Never had a problem.

Be aware that there are only a very limited number of actual carriers. The outfits recommended above are (I presume) agents that don’t do the shipping themselves. These agents may have an arrangement with a particular carrier, or they may shop around for the cheapest price, or a mixture of the two. This means that you might not know which actual carrier will be doing the shipping and you could be caught by the vagaries of the different carriers’ interpretation of the alcohol shipping legalities. I don’t trade myself but I did have a problem whan sending a package for someone else and using one of those companies (I forget which) but it turned out that the actual shipper - again I forget which, think it was Fedex - was a right pain in the arse.

Hi Mark, hope you don’t mind me weighing in, so to speak, as the actual recipient...
I’ve always used Hermes for sending from DE to all over EU and never had lost or broken items.

Just noticed they also ship from UK to Germany:

https://international.myhermes.co.uk/

They appear to have a very dense network of drop-off shops near your area. You can drop off the box (40x40x40) in your town and it will be delivered to my door for about 11 GBP (<15kg). Seems like a good deal, as shipping to/from UK fast becomes pricey by weight

No rush though ;)

Originally posted by bartlebier
Hi Mark, hope you don’t mind me weighing in, so to speak, as the actual recipient...
I’ve always used Hermes for sending from DE to all over EU and never had lost or broken items.

Just noticed they also ship from UK to Germany:

https://international.myhermes.co.uk/

They appear to have a very dense network of drop-off shops near your area. You can drop off the box (40x40x40) in your town and it will be delivered to my door for about 11 GBP (<15kg). Seems like a good deal, as shipping to/from UK fast becomes pricey by weight

No rush though ;)

yes, hermes seems like a good price - but again they use local agents which in my case was yodel and they lost a package and broke some bottles one time delivering to me in NI

I use transglobal express which compares prices on multiple couriers and you pick the best deal. Bear in mind the prices quoted are pre-VAT. Very simple shipping docs emailled to you and customer service has been helpful in chasing up the couriers if a parcel goes awry. You do earn loyalty points to redeem on future orders, which is a nice little touch

I wouldn’t use the post office as their shipping is astronomical and changes with parcel size & shape

Originally posted by Beersiveknown
Very simple shipping docs emailled to you and customer service has been helpful in chasing up the couriers if a parcel goes awry.

Hey, I do trades all the time, send parcels all over Europe and the States both in private trades and every Euro swap. I can totally recommend www.ipostparcels.com. They are among the cheapest and in my experience most efficient. I’ve never had a problem in around 20 trades - sometimes I’ll have it collected from my work address on the Monday and it’ll arrive in Germany or Holland by Thursday. Just last Tuesday I had a parcel collected for delivery to Montana, USA. By Saturday it was delivered and signed for.

If you have a problem / question there’s basically an online chat thing rather than a phone number. I used it this morning to check if this parcel really had been delivered in just 5 days (!), and she sent me a detailed breakdown of it’s entire journey and which carrier it was with (they used UPS in the States).

I’ve used Hermes before, just as a change, and the parcel took 2 weeks to arrive, with little information about its delivery status. Since then it’s always been Ipostparcels.

Also it’s not insured for alcohol, but they will take it (unlike other companies) so don’t worry about stating that it’s beer on the form, unless you’re worried about it being opened by someone en route. In which case the standard descriptor is ’collectable glassware’. You also get emailed regular discount codes sometimes up to 25% off which come in handy. Good luck with the trade!