Sending Christmas Presents to USA

[Zeeky]

Anyone know the cheapest way to send parcels to US? I suppose in hindsight I should just have ordered from the US Amazon site for delivery straight to them, but I have already bought the children their gifts before I thought of that!

I do this and have found that lots of small parcels work out much cheaper than one large parcel - there's some weight threshold that if you go over, the cost doubles (sorry, can't remember what it is). I usually divide the presents between padded envelopes to keep the cost down.

If anyone knows a clever trick, i'd be interested too!

Last year I shipped presents back home using DHL (sent from Ryman's stationary). They have flat rate boxes that you can really jam-pack with items. It worked out
to be about 20 quid cheaper than Parcelforce.

If you go on one of those parcel comparison sites, you will be able to find out if you are better off shipping by weight or volume. I shipped a car seat box, stuffed with car seat, teapots and books by fedex to Australia for 99 English pounds.

DHL at Rymans prices.

Send them early by surface post - it almost halves the cost. One of my US parcels got that treatment this week but since its not for kids, it doesn't really matter!

If you go the surface mail from the post office route - beware. One Christmas we had one box of gifts arrive, three were stolen. :(