Using MyUS.com to ship to Mauritius

MyUS.com is a popular shipping forwarder which allows you to do your online shopping in the US and UK, and then forward your parcels to your real address, here in Mauritius. This turns out to be particularly useful for us Mauritians as since the numerous world wide Covid-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions, many sellers (across most e-commerce platforms) around the world have closed their doors on us, making it very difficult to grab things from your wishlist.

This is why many people (including myself) have turned to companies such as shopandship and now, myus. Some months back, I even wrote a review of shopandship.com. If you missed it, please have a read here.

How is it different from Shopandship.com?

Well, quite a lot. Instead of going for a detailed review, I will compare both MyUS and shopandship, presenting the pros and cons… Newbies (and dummies) can easily understand the whole concept while more experienced shoppers can have a detailed comparison.

Opening an account

Shopandship requires you to pay an one-off fee of $45 to create an account, after which you can start using the service. You can also choose to become a premium member by paying around $119 yearly and get better shipping rates.

MyUS does not require you to pay any fee to become a member. You just open an account and you get to use the service immediately. However, if you open a paying account, you get a wide range of additional services and facilities.

For those who follow the blog on Facebook, I shared a post at the time MyUS was offering 3 months free trial. If you missed that opportunity, you need to make sure that you are subscribed to the facebook page.

Addresses around the world

Shopandship gives you a personal addresses in each of the 32 countries it operates around the world whereas MyUS gives you an address in the US and another one in UK only.

Good to know that shopandship always calculates the shipping price in respect of the weight of your parcel. Parcels landing in your MyUS address in the United States are calculated similarly but parcels in the UK address are calculated via dimensional weight. I’ll give more details at the end of the post.

Shipping carriers and pricing

Parcels delivered at your shopandship address will be automatically forwarded to your real address using Aramex, represented by Celero Ltd in Mauritius whereas MyUS.com offers you the possibility to use USPS, FedEx, UPS or DHL. It goes without saying that shipping fees will greatly vary. Sorry, the price difference is HUGE. But we should not forget that the shipping via premium carriers such as DHL, FedEx and UPS are time-savers.

For comparison purposes, here are the prices and options available when shipping 1 KG from United States to Mauritius. FYI, it costs $16 for shopandship while for myUS is ranges from $38 to $90.

And now, when using Shopandship :

Parcel consolidation

Any parcel reaching your shopandship address is immediately forwarded to your real address, irrespective if a second parcel reached there at the same time. MyUS offers you the possibility to hold your parcels, choose those you want and create a shipping request to send the selected items to your address.

This means that you have control over what and when your individual parcels should be forwarded, particularly useful and economical as you can pay less.

Re-Packaging / Consolidation / Photos

When receiving my bundled parcel today, it was nicely and securely packed by the guys at MyUS. And since there is free package bundling for most of the shipping options, I did not pay for anything extra.

Through your account’s dashboard, you can also pay for high definition photos of your items or break down a larger parcel into smaller ones. As you can guess, these are available only at MyUS.

Parcel returns

This option is unavailable on shopandship.

You can instruct MyUS to return any parcel in your account back to the seller. This is particularly useful if your shipping costs are too high or you changed your decision after your purchases.

It is normally a paid option ($7) but when I used this (read story below), I did not pay anything since my ebay seller provided free returns. Or I was just lucky.

My bad experience using the myUS UK address

When trying MyUS for the first time, I used the UK address option. I had a very bad experience after my 2.2 lbs / 1kg parcel (containing 2 items, worth 40 GBP) reached MyUS premises in the UK. Because shipment in the UK are calculated via “dimensional weight” (or volumetric weight, hence both the size and weight of the parcel are used in the calculation), I got a quote of $3500 to get my small box forwarded to me.

It was outrageous. It sounded like they were booking a whole container for me. I contacted their live chat and WhatsApp number, it was useless. They insisted that the dimensional weight quote was correct. Fortunately, an angel (si dhaneesha tan mwa, li touye mwa) replied back to my email and made a request to have the parcel re-estimated. One day later, MyUS got in touch and informed me that it will cost $85 to ship it via DHL.

It was much better but way too expensive to ship a 11 x 7 x 11 inches box.

Fortunately, MyUS offers a “Return to seller” option. Since it was an eBay purchase, I opened a case to return the item back. I was provided a return label from eBay which would pay for the return shipment. I uploaded this label on MyUS when using the “Return to seller” option. Everything ended nicely, the seller got back his item and I did not have to pay $3500 to send the item to Mauritius. And I did not have to pay for return shipment neither.

I believe that my parcel was just unlucky, resulting in an over-estimated shipping quote. Also, this showed that it was not economical to use the service from the UK, at least, not as long as they calculate the price per dimensional weight. While I was quoted $85 from UK, a parcel of the same weight from the US would have cost as from $38.

Last words and tips

Overall, I am impressed with the myUS service (except the UK experience) :

Very good response time: Once a parcel reaches your myUS address, your account is updated in a couple of hours, unlike shopandship which can take up to 2 days. Parcels can be normally shipped to your real address within 2-3 days but if you pay around $3, they will ship it asap.

Prices : Yes, it is expensive but quality comes at a price, we all agree on that. I remember that around 10 years ago, I paid $100 to get my first ebay purchase eve, my Nikon Camera worth $700 shipped from the US and it took just 4-5 days. Having peace of mind when shipping expensive stuff is very important. With DHL, my item stayed in customs for 1-1.5 working day whereas with shopandship (Aramex / Celero), it would have been at least 1 week. Some friends even complained about their parcels staying in customs for 2-3 weeks!

Extra facilities : It is just awesome to be able to return specific items back to the seller or pack a few boxes into 1 single one. This said, I encourage you to look for sellers who accept Returns, especially Free Returns.

Once my 3 months trial is over, I can opt to pay $9.99 (~Rs 450) monthly or $60 yearly (~Rs 2700) for a premium membership. I do not know if I will continue with a membership or I will just use the free account one and pay a monthly fee only when I need to purchase more than 1 item. Meanwhile, I can continue to use shopandship for less critical items.

Hope that you enjoyed the post and it turns out to be informative.

🎊 I grab this opportunity to wish all of you and your loves ones a 🎄 Merry Xmas 🎄 and a 🌟 Happy New Year 2022 🌟

Thank you 🙏 again for reading the blog…

Cheers 🥂