Scrolling through Instagram the other day, I landed upon this sexy pair of platforms that happened to be on a spot sale for £60 (down from £150 – hello, can someone say bargain!)

So I clicked through, chose my type, put in my billing address and went to check out. I had been charged $50 extra because they would be shipping to South Africa. Cancel that excitement.

It really got to me for a while, but then I remembered something that Seth had been going on about for ages: Postbox Courier. Duh. So I went to investigate.

You see, while Seth has shared stories with you about the ability to get products delivered to South Africa from sites that would otherwise not (like from Amazon, etc), the other amazing side to using Postbox Courier is you can have goods delivered to South Africa for cheaper and in a far more reliable, quicker manner.

Most sites deliver to the USA, UK, or Hong Kong for free – or for a lot less than $50. When you sign up to Postbox Courier (no charge) you get given an overseas address to which companies can deliver your products.

Once you have ordered something, you give Postbox Courier a heads up and they will send you an invoice once it has arrived on their side (generally on the same day).

When they received payment, you will get the item delivered to your door within 3/5 days.

But the best part is that Postbox Courier handles your product every step of the way. That means it doesn’t get stuck at customs, nor is delivery affected by post office strikes, and they also make sure you don’t get stung by the wrong VAT duty.

Also, 3/5 days without any hassle? Come on, that should be reason alone.

Here’s an example of one price break down of a product that isn’t delivered to South Africa:

Seth did a check with Postbox Courier about that Amazon drone that can’t be delivered to South Africa and here’s the calculation they gave him:

Drone USD838.89 (R12600.13)
Sales Tax USD74.45 (R1118.24)

Shipping USD95.00 (R1426.90)
(That’s working on the drone weight of 1.3kg and dimensions of 60cm.)

Clearance R125.00
Import vat R1940.42
Disb R48.51

So based on the current exchange rate of 15.02 the total will be R17259.20. 

Not too shabby.

So if you are really into online shopping, but are over the hassle of international shipping, you should really just set up your account with Postbox Courier and live a life free of painful postal services.