If you’re an Aussie and you’ve ever tried ordering things over the internet you’ve probably discovered the prices are lower on any number of things in America, but American stores typically won’t ship to Australia. Why? Nobody knows!

Previously you could use services like Shipito to circumvent some of these restrictions. You get a US based address with them and have your goods delivered there, then they ship them to you for a small fee plus postage.

I guess AusPost wanted a slice of that pie because they recently launched ShopMate, where you get a US based address to ship your goods to then pay AusPost the cost of bringing them to you.

So, cool. Does it work?

Yes!

What made me try it was a Star Wars themed “mystery box” that ThinkGeek wouldn’t ship outside the US. Why not? I have the box now and I still don’t know. Maybe it’s illegal to export Death Stars, even when they’re only tea infusers?

Anyway, I chucked that and some themed polo shirts in my cart and placed an order on the 12th of November. ThinkGeek shipped it the 13th and it arrived at ShopMate on… the 20th. A whole week for delivery within the US. Okay.

It then took another week to go from their warehouse to my door, halfway round the world. Arriving on the 27th means it took 15 days, which isn’t particularly fast but not painfully slow.

As for the cost? If ThinkGeek had been willing to ship directly to me it would have cost around $US55. As it was technically being shipped to a US address and they had free shipping at the time I only had to pay the ShopMate fee.

Which came to $AU59.70. It ain’t cheap, but after the currency conversion it worked out cheaper than the direct option, oddly enough.

The only really disappointing part of the whole experience was the lack of tracking available between ShopMate’s US location and the parcel arriving in Australia. You don’t get any kind of update until it’s in the country and ready for delivery. It’s a bit of a nitpick, it doesn’t really matter so long as your stuff arrives, but it would be nice. Maybe you can track it and I just can’t find the right bit?

One test run isn’t conclusive but so far it’s reasonably priced, reasonably quick and super easy to use. I’ll certainly be using it again. Possibly to get some Lego…