With the death of Shop The States I was looking for a cheap alternative - it doesn't exist

After an abortive attempt to sign up for eaziship - they don't offer the service anymore and refunded my sign up fee (but haven't indicated this on their website!!) the least worst option for my needs was the USA2me Bronze Plan

Costs:

USD$23 sign up

They require more information than the Government on Census night - front and back of credit card, copies of 2 forms of ID and a signature from a public notary or notable office holder (I used my Bank Manager) - AUD$3.70 to sent the docs

Shipping Charges - USD$29.95 for first pound then USD$5.95 per pound after that

Fuel levy - running ~ 13% at the moment

From the above you'll see that you need to order multiple pound orders to make the shipping reasonable - buying one CD from Buy.com would be prohibitive

Services

You get a street address in Texas and access to a public fax number

They email you every time you receive a package but you get to control when and how they send. They will also repack multiple packages to minimise freight on the proviso that they share the cost savings with you

How I used it


BMG Music Club offer a buy 1 get 11 free CD offer for first timers so I tried that. The 11 discs are free but shipping is USD$2.79 per disc plus you pay state sales tax (8.25% for Texas I think) on most, but not all titles. Also they calculate each disc as one of the free discs so a CD/DVD combo counts as 2 discs

The full priced disc is USD$18 and up so for my total of 11CDs (one being a CD/DVD combo) I paid USD$48.34 delivered to my USA2me address (including shipping and state taxes)

Each disc weighs 0.25 - 0.3 pound so my 11 Cds came to 2.9 pound = 3 pound rounded up. Shipping estimate for this is USD$41.85 + ~13% fuel surcharge = USD$47.30

So total cost for the exercise was USD$23 + USD$41.85+USD 47.30 = AUD$145.65 + AUD$3.70 = say $AUD150 or $AUD13.60 per CD. Not a bad price

I also ordered the Get Smart BoxSet from TimeLife US for USD$170 and it weighs in at 4 pound. Given that I've attributed the setup costs and initial USD$29.95 for the first pound to the Cds then the Get Smart box works out at ~ USD$197 shipped or ~ AUD$256

Having absorbed the setup costs I'm now able to buy from any on-line US store. Yourmusic.com is the obvious target as they have free shipping and USD$6.99 per Cd but Overtstock.com and Buy.com etc are now attainable. Used judiciously with batched orders this could still work out OK. I haven't received my first delivery yet, as it will despatch tomorrow, but it looks OK so far

PS - Can't beat the USD$40 shipping for the 26 pound Toshiba HD-A1 from DeepDisocount though

Cheers

Martin

An excellent review of a service I might now actually consider. Thanks heaps.

I just went through the process of cancelling my USA2ME account. Let me tell you what the cost of this absolutely ridiculous service was:

Initial membership 30 dollars.
Going to get a lawyer to sign some customs declaration form 70 dollars (I realize USA2ME doesnt have anything to do with this, but it is a huge pain to do)
Cost of shipping a one foot by one foot package from USA2ME to Canada $115 dollars.

So basically they charge like 3 times what UPS does to send the package. How does that make sense. So now they have youre package basically hostage. A couple weeks goes by.
Storage fee charged by USA2ME, 20 dollars.

At this point the package wasnt worth it and i didnt realize they were going to charge me for shipping. So i decided to cancel my account.
Discarding package fee by USA2ME, 20 dollars.

So USA2ME basically gets you to send them youre package, and then holds it hostage. And when you realize youre paying like 3 times what the package was worth to begin with, they charge you to throw it in the garbage.

USA2ME is a huge scam. They forced me to throw out a perfectly good package, and I paid them about 70 bucks to do it. And it totally using them cost me around 200+ dollars.