New International Shipping (Door-to-Door Tracking)

New International Shipping (Door-to-Door Tracking)

Ever since shipping orders taken through a Google form in 2015, international shipping has always been an area where I've been looking to improve transparency. The process was overall very straightforward for sending packages, but the lack of tracking past the USA has caused many headaches in cases where postal problems might occur.

Through a partnership with a USPS certified shipping consolidator, we have now have access to a recently introduced service that provides full tracking door-to-door for international packages delivered to most countries. This post will explain the details, supported countries, and rate changes.

International Shipping Changes

Starting January 21st, USPS rolled out a bundle of new rate changes. They were mostly incremental price raises, none of which would affect our business significantly, however one big change was made: USPS discontinued our usual international shipping option.

This change has led us to look into other options for similar international shipping services. We are happy to announce that we have partnered with a USPS Postal Qualified Wholesaler which provides us with more options for sending packages internationally, including the same service as before (which was not discontinued for large businesses).

Our method for shipping internationally has always been the following:

USPS -> Destination Country (2-3 days, fully tracked)

Destination Country's Local Post -> Delivery to Customer (4-7+ days, no tracking)

The issue is that there was no tracking past the USA, meaning there was no way to see what was happening on our tracking page while the package is being delivered by the post office of the destination country.

Fully-tracked Shipping

To solve this issue, we have adopted a recently introduced service that provides full tracking door-to-door for international packages. The price is a bit higher and only certain countries are supported, however the price is still very reasonable and the list of countries includes almost every popular country we have served in the past. Here is the full list of countries:

  • Australia 
  • Belgium 
  • Brazil
  • Canada 
  • Croatia
  • Denmark
  • Estonia
  • Finland 
  • France
  • Germany 
  • Gibraltar
  • Hong Kong
  • Hungary
  • Ireland 
  • Israel 
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Latvia
  • Lithuania
  • Luxembourg
  • Malaysia 
  • Malta
  • Netherlands 
  • New Zealand 
  • Portugal
  • Singapore 
  • South Korea
  • Spain 
  • Sweden 
  • Switzerland
  • United Kingdom

The transparency this service provides is easily worth the price difference. Please note that it technically still goes through the same channels: USPS to your destination country's domestic postal carrier. The main difference is that tracking within your country is now included.

Over the last week we have been working to update Foxbox to support this new service and it is finally fully integrated with our back end. For the countries listed above, the shipping prices have been updated to the new universal rates below:

Tablet Covers / Decals: $4.98 USD

If order includes a mousepad: $7.98 USD

If your country is not listed above, a service identical to the one we used previously is also available to us now through our postal consolidator. Tracking is provided up to the point where the package leaves the US, then the tracking page we link isn't usually capable of displaying updates past your country's local customs (same as before). The rates have not changed: $2.98 USD for all packages and destinations.

I've been told that at least five more countries will be added to the list of supported countries for the new fully-tracked shipping method very soon (with more to come in the near future). If and when these are supported I will be sure to update the site and post any info I receive about it.

-----

If you have not joined our Discord server yet, I highly encourage you to do so as it is by far the easiest place to get information on the status of current orders, updates to the site, and receive direct contact to myself or other admins. Feel free to ask there or contact our team if you have any questions about this new shipping update (or anything you might need).

Thank you all for your ongoing support; we will continue to improve Foxbox wherever we can as well as bring you new and exciting products in the coming months.

Discord server: https://discord.gg/foxbox

My Discord username: Horo#0001

Cheers,

Horo