Viabox

I've been using viabox services for several years and despite a few issues (clunky outdated website and forms, lot of field to fill when contacting support, repacking not free for more than 10 items, overcharged shipping) they actually do the job.
Once you get to know your way around their system it's not that difficult to use their service.

But in the last couple years, a series of price increase sent their prices through the roof, paypal disappeared, and their payment processor has issues with foreign cards. They offer bitcoin payments but promote a shady third party with additional fees.

Their prices are now so high that you will probably save money by buying each items directly and skipping viabox. Really too expensive to be worth using, I paid 4 times more for a smaller package than 3 years ago.

I just used their service without checking the reviews before, they calculated cargo cost as if they are shipping everything separately then charged me that much then they consolidate the goods in one very small box and ship. Never going to use their service again.

I used their service to buy a few gadgets and a small TUMI Bag.
Since they do not charge for opening an account, have no membership fees whatsoever, and are based in a tax free state, i thought i would use them cause i was saving around 90 dollars of Tax versus other companies that were based in states that charge amazon a sales tax.

Bottom line of my experience:

- They shipped with TNT, the cheapest and slowest shipper.
- They charged me for around 100% more than the other shippers. To give you an idea, according to them, my dimension weight for the bag was 30 pounds. Bare in mind that different companies calculate the dimension weights differently. They all multiple the depth by the height and the width, then they take the output and divide it by a certain number. Look like this number is very high with these guys.
When you compare this to others, it is around 3 times the weight i got with others.

I ended up paying much more for shipping than i would have paid for tax.
Bottom line is stay away from them.

Write your review to help others learn about this online businessThe service is slow as well as technical support, their policy is not clear.
The company does not respect their customers. Some times, they changed their customers requests choices of shipping carrier after the clients payment the shipment's value without informing the client.

There are other companies better from this one.

I've used this twice now, both times I ordered from many different vendors and had my package consolidated. First package was 9 pounds, had it shipped to China for 78 USD. Second package was 7 pounds, cost me 84 USD to ship to the same address. I know it's live but I would not call those rates an "unbeatable shipping price" as advertised on their main page.

During my 2nd time using Viabox, among my orders were 2 small bottles of beauty spray that contained witch hazel. I've ordered other products with that ingredient before and have had no problems with it. But Viabox refused to ship it and gave me the option to have them either throw it out or returned to the vendor on my behalf. I asked them to return it for me so I could get a refund. They said if I didn't have a prepaid return label, they could give me quotes for the cost of shipping it back. The cheapest option, to send the two bottles back to a US address (US to US) was 73 USD! That order cost only 12 USD to ship to Viabox. Their rates are high and make ZERO sense. I would not recommend Viabox and I will never use it again. #shafted

I have used viabox twice now, the first time was easy and hassle free. The delivery took an additional week or so but I did save a little money as intl shipping with the store was very high. When the item reached viabox, the cheapest shipping cost they offered was $39 for a pair of jeans to be sent to the UK - still a lot but cheaper than the store.

My second experience is a whole other story... The US post office have my package ( a bag i purchased from Saks during a sale). When i was chasing the order delivery status through Saks I was advised there was no one 'home' to accept my delivery and therefore it is with the local US Post Office awaiting my collection - and has been since the end of Nov. Viabox did not advise me of this at any point.

I completed the online help tool Viabox offer. Received an email back requesting me to complete a USPS 'Delivery through agent form' - easy enough. However, the form has to be signed and stamped by a Public Notary. In UK this service can cost over £150. In USA it costs barely anything. There are online agents who will notarize a document for $75 but there are no guarantees this will be accepted or how long it will take. Also, there goes the saving I would have made. Consequently, I do not feel I should pay this fee as it is not my fault no one was there to accept my parcel on the initial day of delivery.

I now have two options, firstly progress with the notary fee but I cannot be guaranteed that Viabox will collect the item in time before the post office return the item. On the other hand, I also do not know how long it will take for the Post Office to return and for the item to be refunded (days, weeks, months...). If i repurchase the bag (supposed to be a MK bag for my mum's christmas) and change from Viabox to another company I may be in the same boat and have two packages held by the US Post Office.

Sorry for the ramble... Venting.
In summary, when it works it does work well. However, you cannot be guaranteed that anyone will be there to accept your delivery and then you are stuck with the decision of spending a lot of money for someone to stamp a document as the US and UK legal systems are completely different.

Has anyone used any other shipping service? Or been in a similar situation - notarization of documents out with USA.

The first time I used Viabox the process went smoothly. The second time I got overcharged on transport, and when my package arrived it had an inflated plastic bag instead of two pairs of Bluetooth earphones I was expecting!

Legitimate service, but slow and very overpriced.

So, I have used Viabox 3 or 4 times over the past couple of years, and the good news is that they are a legitimate US to Canada shipping service. Two or three of the times the service has been acceptable and the only complaint that I would relay is that their shipping markup is quite high.

However, the last time I used them (around Christmas) to ship an HTC Vive from them to my address in Canada, their service and pricing was unacceptable. I paid $230 for the parcel via (which they said was 25 pounds, even though the weight of the Vive is closer to 15 pounds). Normally I would have used their repacking service to lower the cost, but I didn't have the 3-5 business days required, so I took the hit and paid the $230 for the 2-4 business day service through TNT Express. With this service, it should have arrived on December 23, or at the latest the 27th. Currently, it is January 4th, and the package still hasn't arrived.

The worst part is that when I emailed their customer service to compain, they told me that their shipping times are not guaranteed at all, which it doesn't say on their site.

So in the end, I paid $230 (which is a ridiculous amount of shipping) to get something that would normally have cost around $50-60 to have directly shipped to me.

UPDATE:

On their website it says:

"Compare our ***unbeatable*** shipping rates to others.
There are NO HIDDEN FEES at Viabox. You pay only for shipping fees to forward packages to your country."

I believed this at first, but after this incident, I compared their pricing for my package at Shipitto.com, and it turned out that Viabox.com's rate was at least 40% higher.

I registered for viabox & was given a suite number; I bought some sports shirts & socks & had them shipped to that suite; a day or two later, when I logged on, there was no US address in my dashboard anymore. I thought that was weird & re-entered the info; but it gave me a different suite number; despite having logged on with the same user and password, the support told me (after 4 days) that it was my fault for creating a 2nd account! I definitely didn't, but the order was finally marked as arrived in my dashboard, so I clicked on ship now and paid the amount. This was more than double what the estimate was... for 6 shirts & 6 pair of socks it cost $225US to ship to Australia! Ridiculous, but what else could I do. The amount then showed as paid in my paypal account (and in my associated credit card). In my dashboard, the item moved to the Outgoing side as I would have expected, saying 'processing'. When I checked 2-3 hours later, it was no longer on the Outgoing side but back in the 'arrived' area and asking me to Ship Now again and wanting payment again. Once again their support took 3 days to figure out that I had paid and then shipped them. They again blamed me, saying I must have pressed the Back button during payment. What a ridiculous thing to say, as their own site had it showing correctly for several hours after the payment, before reverting to the previous state! The shipping option I chose was DHL 2-4 days delivery. They sent me 2 different tracking emails (for TNT Express instead of DHL), neither of which worked. After 2-3 more days the Viabox site itself had a link on it saying Shipped & if I clicked on it, that worked. The delivery took 11 days, not 2-4. During this whole process I tried to call them on no less than 10 times, at various times of day, trying to actually talk to someone... voicemail every time! This was a terrible and expensive experience. I will definitely choose someone else next time!

Enough of these phony reviews... Damn. I've been using VIAddress for a couple of weeks and it hasn't been very bad. All my packages are listed in the account area and I've already received a refund for a cancelled concierge order.
They are slow. And their PR sucks! I mean, there's something about the replies they send you which seems to say something like "you guys are jerks. If anything goes wrong, it's your fault".
If you can put up with that I guess it's ok. I hope someone would find this useful. I'll post more comments after (if?) my order gets shipped.

I DON'T KNOW IF VIADDRESS IS AS CHEAP AS THEY SAY. SHIPPING IS QUIET FAST. BUT IF YOU HAVE ANY PROBLEM, OR YOU NEED TO CLARIFY SOMETHING, WELL, THEY HAVE THE WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER. THERE IS NOT A CHAT LINE AS MOST OF COMPANY OFFER. IF YOU NEED ANY INFORMATION YOU HAVE TO SEND THEM A MAIL. PROBABLY THEY WILL ANSWER (A FEW DAY AFTER) PROBABLY NOT. THIS IS NOT GOOD FOR BUSINESS.

Website - Impressive, once logged in, you'll be welcome by a user dashboard. It allows you to put in the expected orders and updates you once the parcel arrives. It doesn't update me on the item I paid for shipping.

Service - Slow in response. Paid for shipping for a week now and hasn't got any updates on my item being shipped. Doesn't response to email. Will try calling - my bet is I wouldn't get through.

Overall experience - Not good. Will not encourage anyone to use them., it's only gotta be a one time thing.

I am legit reviewers, not scammers from other freight forwarder.

One of my many order number is this: VIA*******
If anyone read this and is form Viaddres, you'll know that I am not bull$#*!ting.