Online shopping is infinitely more enjoyable than finding parking and braving the masses in person.

If you know where to look there are great savings to be had, including making smart use of overseas retailers.

Whether it’s Amazon or eBay or whatever online retailer you prefer, there are few things more frustrating than finding a killer deal, only to be told that they don’t ship to South Africa.

We are here. We have money. Sell us and send us your goods.

There are some excellent workarounds available to South African consumers, and none more so than Postbox Courier. You can now place an order from retailers anywhere in the world and have your purchase delivered to your door.

The ‘pay as you go’ system is easy to follow, and there’s also a handy calculator that gives you an instant quote on all of the shipping costs involved.

This includes the shipping itself, import duty and VAT, clearance, and disbursement, which are the kind of things that you really don’t want to be hit with after you think you’ve paid all the costs involved.

In order to get your quote, you need to check the product information tab (or product specifications, or something along those lines) on the item you want to purchase.

For example, Takealot has this information available on every product page.

It wouldn’t make sense to buy a blender from overseas but we’ll use it as a starting point for our quote. Here are the specs:

Amazon also has that same information listed for each product under the ‘Product description’ section.

We head for the Postbox Courier quote calculator, punch in the numbers, and assume for the sake of the example that we’re buying the product from a US retailer:

Bang – you’re paying around $112 to have the goods delivered to your door, three to five working days after they’ve arrived at the overseas address provided for you.

Again, the blender isn’t going to work out cheaper from overseas but certain products definitely will even with the cost of couriering it factored in.

There are also many products that aren’t available to purchase in South Africa which you can now get your paws on.

Look at that – you didn’t set a single foot in customs and no logistical headaches were endured.

Signing up for Postbox Courier is free, and you can pop past their website to find out more.