freight forwarding companies?

[purpleorange]

Has anyone had any experience using a freight forwarding company to ship a guitar from the US to the UK?

I have found a company selling simon & patrick woodland pro parlour guitars for around £272 with free shipping in the USA. These guitars seem to be listed at around £800 on the UK sites.

I am thinking about using a company like myus.com to have the guitar shipped over, are there any other companies that I should consider using.

[purpleorange]

I think that myus.com has set up fees and membership fees, I need to find a company that will just charge a fee per item posted.

[Matt]

Don't forget that you'll probably be liable for import taxes and VAT, plus the cost of shipping and insurance.

As for shipping companies, possibly FEDEX or UPS? I also seem to remember American Express do things like that for their customers, a friend once had something that would only ship within the USA forwarded to the UK by AmEx

[Stevie]

I had a Heritage Sweet 16 shipped from the USA. The eBay seller used his preferred carrier which was DHL. It arrived in perfect condition in a little over 30 hours! DHL let me have the consignment immediately. I only received the import bill from them about 6 weeks later which I paid as soon as I could, in recognition of good service. As usual, Caveat Emptor AKA YMMV! Shipping that way is costly though, I seem to recall that the carriage cost was about £160 before C&E duty! You may like to consider that, based on the purchase price.

[purpleorange]

I can get the same guitar of ebay.com for £370 plus £60 p&p and duty/tax. If I can find a package forwarding company to ship the guitar for under £100 there will still be a good saving to be made.

I am adding on an extra third to cover the vat, import duty and handling costs.

There seems to be a lot of mixed reviews about these parcel forwarding companies, I just need to make sure that I pick the right one to use.

[Matt]

Make sure you question them thoroughly on their insurance cover of musical instruments, some carriers impose various conditions to wriggle out of paying up, such as the instrument being shipped in a hard case, whether or not the strings are on during shipping, things like that.

[Deleted]

I used myus.com's standard membership and it was only 10 USD...really good service and package arrived in 4 days. didn't have to pay any added insurance it was included in membership fee. good luck.