gifts to the usa

[philly]

My SIL has just had first baby in States does nayone know of the best waay to get flowers or gifts delivered from this country?Any recommendations useful

If you contact amazon.com you can get gifts delivered and avoid the cost of shipping them across the atlantic, but that limits you to toys, books etc. Does interflora do the same thing?

You can probably order from most US websites, specifying a US delivery address and the billing address as yours.
Babycenter.com has a store with baby things etc.

philly, if you do an internet delivery your SIL might have to pay Customs duty on it...

FWIW I recently posted a parcel to an internet friend in North Carolina (it was 2 boxes of Christmas crackers - they don't have them over there and she is fascinated by them!) - the airmail postage was about 9GBP so we sent them surface (about 4GBP) and she got them a week later.

So I would say buy something fairly light (like a newborn gift outfit?) and post it to her yourself, with "gift" on the Customs sticker. IME British baby clothes are much nicer than American - their babygros have to be polyester, for instance, because of the fire risk. That way you get the fun(?) of shopping too!

Interflora is international but I wouldn't recommend it as you have no control at all what they get - I ordered a 'posy' for my friend and she got a stange thing a bit like a venus fly trap.

I agree with Janh - getting something from abroad is really lovely (plus you can buy it at Primark and they'll never know!). But if you do want to order from a web site I'd recommend BabiesRus.com

Oh, PhilippaT, I can vouch for that - I'd forgotten - DD1 was born in New York and my Dad sent some flowers; I was asleep when they came and I woke up to find something dark red/brown, fluffy and hideous on the table - this for a little girl born in April!

philly, I just followed PhilippaT's babiesrus suggestion and ended up at:

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/1036592/ref%3Dtab%5Fgw%5Fap%5F4/002-7945700-9669611

which is amazon.com's list of their "merchants" - includes Gap and OshKosh - may be worth a look if you don't want to shop yourself. They give shipping charges but I can't tell if it's OK to buy from here. (In the US, if you buy from an out-of-state mail order company you don't have to pay your own state's sales tax - I don't know how they arrange things if you are out of the country.)

So what's wrong with Primark!? Anyway, you can order stuff off american websites by paying with a credit card and have it sent directly. But as an American who lives in london, I would agree that there are some baby things that are much better here like baby gro's. I'm afraid that janh is exaggerating about the polyester, but the 2/3 packs that you get at john lewis or mothercare or tesco's don't really seem to exist in the usa. And it wouldn't cost too much to send them. I sent a friend a package of 20 or so old babygros that I didn't need anymore and it cost £12 for airmail.
Then again I have just remembered the most wonderful store called potterybarnkids which has the most gorgeous baby/kid bedroom stuff. There aren't too many of the stores around, but they have a website which is this .

For a pampering gift for the Mum you can send Lush goodies to the states from www.lushcanada.com

Ah, just the thread I need, although not for baby gifts! Maybe SophieAmes, Janh or Soupdragon can help me. I've been trying to order some gift vouchers from Macy's firstly by internet then by speaking to a person(whatever will they think of next!!) but neither time would the transaction go through, because I wasn't ordering within the US. I've also had two magazine subscriptions to the US rejected, although one of them began sending the magazine anyway!! Any clues as to why I'm being rejected?

Also, what is the cheapest way to transfer money from a UK bank account to a US account?

Janh, you've got me worried as I sent a box of gifts surface mail to LA just after New Year and they've yet to arrive. Pleeeeese don't tell me they're lost.....

Philly, it's easy and fast to airmail goods to the US and it can be relatively inexpensive if you use Small Package or Printed Paper rates (useful if you want to send photos, which are quite heavy). They are roughly half the Letter rate, I think but still go airmail. There are limits on what you can send, can only include a letter if it's relevant to the contents etc but I rarely use letter rate now.

Oh dear, suedonim, I can see that's worrying but it's quite likely that my quick delivery was a fluke - also mine was East Coast and yours is West. Yours must be on a wagon train. (When we first came back here to live I dutifully organised all my cards and gifts to catch the last date for surface mail for Christmas - October sometime I think - good grief, if I tried to do that now I would faint! - and they all arrived the next week too, which was sooooo embarrassing!) How long do they tell you to allow for surface mail? 6 weeks or something? I'm sure it will turn up - fingers crossed!

Re transferring money, I asked my bank (Alliance and Leicester) about this recently and they charge 25GBP for an international bank transfer - that's the only one I know about - SofiaAmes probably knows more. Goodness knows what the situation is with the US purchases - you would think with the internet it would be quite straightforward. My Anglophile internet friend in NC wants to buy the UK edition of Harry Potter when it comes out, so I pointed her towards amazon.co.uk rather than .com, and the UK site has details of delivery charges etc to the rest of the world; I don't think the .com one does - I couldn't find it anyway - and some US sites just don't ship abroad at all.

SofiaAmes, re the polyester babygros, I put an IME in there as I didn't know what they're like now, but when my DD1 was born that was the situation. I still have a Sears catalogue from 1983, which I kept as a souvenir (this is Mrs Clutter speaking), and all the kids/baby clothes are either polyester or poly/cotton - oh, except for vests, fortunately - they must have changed the rules (good job too, the polyester ones used to feel horrible!)

Natwest charges £9 I think for an international transfer up to £2000

Thx for the info re banking. Yes, 6wks is what they say for surface mail, Janh - I now have visions of my parcel travelling overland like something out of 'Little House on the Prairie', lol!

suedonim. I normally transfer the other way (US to UK) and it usually cost $25 or so regardless of the amount. Are you transferring large amounts. Make sure you check out the tax implications first if you are. I didn't when I first came to the UK (didn't occur to me that two such friendly countries might want to double tax me) and almost got myself in some tax trouble.
Suedonim, were you trying to have the vouches/ magazines sent out of the usa? What country was the credit card based in? I've had problems ordering stuff in both the usa and the uk online/over the phone with my usa based credit card with a uk mailing address. Eventually it turned out the problem lay with the credit card company whose computers kept flagging the transactions as fraud (7.95 for a calender refill....as if!) because they were from a foreign country, never mind that it was the country registered as where the mailing address for the card was.
janh, I wonder if all the babygros in england in 1983 weren't polyester as well. I think the whole world was polyester in those days. I distinctly remember my very obese high school geometry teacher in the late 70's wearing a pink stretch polyester pant suit every day to class...ugh!

SofiaAmes, you are right, there was a lot of hideous polyester around here then too - my 1983 edition of P Leach's Baby and Child book includes lots of photos of children wearing ghastly polyester overalls etc, ugh ugh ugh! And IIRC they came in lovely shades of brown, orange and red. Mmmmmm. (The thought of the obese teacher in the pink polyester pantsuit is worthy of Angela Anaconda...very barfworthy!)

However my SIL, who had had a baby the year before, sent me a lovely bundle of Mothercare first-size towelling babygros (they were so SWEET! - though as DD only weighed less than 6lbs I had to turn back the cuffs twice) and they were 80% cotton/20% nylon. So I was a bit prejudiced I think. But once I discovered OshKosh I was hooked on the American stuff for years! (Those sliding strap adjusters are so clever.)

Sofieames, the amounts are pretty small. One is a sterling cheque someone sent DS for Xmas for 20gbp and the other thing is money I want to send to pay for a bridemsaid dress, about $120. Looks like it would be cheaper to send it in $ notes from the UK - I wonder if Royal Mail do an insurance?

LOL at the calendar refill 'fraud'! I was trying to order from the UK with a UK card so maybe that was the problem. You tend to think that nowadays, what with the internet and WWW, everything should be easy-peasy and it's bloomin' annoying when it isn't!!

RE babygros, cotton ones have always been available in the UK since I had my first baby in '75. All four of my children have worn the ones I bought in M/care - wonder if they count as museum pieces now??

suedonim, if you aren't in a terrible hurry (it probably takes a week for the mail to reach the usa), I would be quite happy to write an american check for you and you can put the money in my bank account here. It would save you having to pay commission on such small amounts. I empathize with trying to get small amounts from one country to another...that's one good thing about the euro. Feel free to get my email from mumsnet if you want the help.

Suedomin, I have had surface mail take 3 months to west coast (but that's only when it's really important it gets there quickly... ). In fact all out furniture, clothes etc took that long when we moved out there (strike in LA docks), but 6 weeks is more normal. I'm very impressed with the janh's week - it normally takes that long airmail to west coast I find (I wonder if sometimes they just fling it in with the airmail instead of the container ship?). Personally, I like to picture the ship going through the Panama canal rather than a Little House on the Prairee wagon train.

We never had any trouble ordering anything when we lived in the US with our UK credit card but yes, it could simply be the lack of a Zip code that is throwing their computer system out. If you don't feel confident enough sending small amounts of cash, you could try a travellers cheque which they can cash as a usual check.

Before we moved out there we investigated which bank did the cheapest transfers of money UK-US (and changed accordingly). Back then (95) it was Co-op. But they have a different set of charges depending on how fast you want it to go. Nowadays our money tends to go in the other direction (US-UK) for dh's work and HSBC do the best deal that way (£16 for 4 checks).

Thanks for all the helpful hints, everyone! As we are likely to want to transfer bits of cash at regular intervals I shall look at setting up soemthing more permanent. PayPal has also been recommended as a cheap way of moving small amounts of money about.

Sofiames, that is a very kind and generous offer to someone you only 'know' in cyberspace. Since my last post a friend in the US has offered to do a similar transfer for me, but if that doesn't work out, I'll come back to you, if I may.

Many appreciative thanks, again.