Feedback Wanted from International Head-Fiers: USPS vs FedEx - Page 3

Thanks for asking this Justin, it shows your commitment.

Knowing that Fedex is using Sagawa as their contractor in Japan, I wouldn't choose Fedex. Sagawa is the worse of all the japanese transportation companies, in Tokyo at least. They use a lot of temp staff, with larger delivery zones, and that leads to deliveries being delayed, or postponed. At best the quality of the service is highly varying depending on your location.

As stated earlier, EMS is cheaper, keeps the package at the post office if you're not home, and the customs' fees are reasonable. To me it's the best deal.

For other countries, the choice might be different, based on the delivery time. In Europe, for example, EMS can take a week to pass customs. However I bet that Fedex would charge you 3 or 4 times more to clear the customs in 2 or 3 days less. Problem is, the client is charged directly, so it can be a very unpleasant surprise when receiving the package.

I prefer USPS because they could deliver to post office box.  

Justin,

From a UK perspective and in my experience -

FedEx are much quicker at delivering overseas packages to me and the importation duty is collected retrospectively which can be important if the item is time sensitive. 

USPS have a reciprocal agreement with Royal Mail in the UK, so on entry and after Customs clearance they deal with all USPS items. They demand prepayment of importation duty prior to delivery and are slow at sending out these bills thereby delaying delivery.

For comparative example. An item ordered from the USA recently using FedEx expedited was delivered from Oregon to my door in 3 days, with import duty payable a week later when the FedEx bill arrived. Another item from California ordered using USPS international priority took exactly 15 days to be delivered, 4 of these days were added on by Royal Mail insisting on prepayment of import duty.

Cheers,

Andy. 

Actually preferred Fedex this time. I like their tracking system, with estimated date of delivery. USPS can take longer than it should sometimes. With USPS, I've had shipments delayed up to 2 weeks for no apparent reason.  Also, I know when shipping International from Canada, the maximum insurance allowed on a parcel is $1K. I don't know if USPS has this limitation. If there is, you might have to use Fedex for insurance reasons anyway.