Buyandship Malaysia review

[Aug 2021 edit: While it's no longer RM15-20 per lb, you can find current prices here; but they're still charging in RM. My referral link is still at the bottom of this post. Sekian, terima kasih.]

NOT A PAID POST/SPON CON/ETC - I ACTUALLY SPENT OWN MONEY 

It's been years since I last used a forwarding service, the last time being HopShopGo. I know there are plenty of established freight forwarding companies, but my main grouses are that they charge in USD (and the RM sucks right now) and they have all these extra charges which I'm not really a fan of, especially the repacking charge. 

I recently had read about a new freight forwarding service called Buyandship, which launched in Malaysia this year. What caught my eye was that shipping charges is RM15 per pound (lbs). Yes, RINGGIT, NOT USD.  First time users get 10 points (1 point = RM1), so you effectively get RM10 off your first shipping order. (It was RM10 per pound before, but only this week it went up to RM15).

When you sign up, you get your personal ID number and addresses of their warehouses located in US, UK, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China and Hong Kong. Check out the tutorial here. 

I decided to try this out with a messenger bag I bought from eBay which I didn't want to pay USD60 shipping for (damn eBay Global Shipping Program) for the seller to send to me directly in Malaysia. But $13 domestic USPS Priority Mail, I'm okay with. More importantly it had a tracking number I could update in the BuyandShip system so that they know to expect it at their place or else it wasn't moving on to HK. 

It took a couple of days for it to get from Massachusetts to Oregon. I got an email saying that they got it in Oregon. It took a few more days for it to get from US to HK and on Monday (8th October), I got another email update from them saying that it reached their HK warehouse. Since I wasn't expecting any more packages, I decided to just pay the shipping charge from HK to KL right away. The package was 2.6 lbs, but because it's more than 0.1 lbs, I was charged for 3 lbs (RM30). Because of the first timer promo, I only paid RM20. 

The following day (Tuesday), I got an email from DHL saying that my package is on its way and that it was expected to reach me before the end of the next business day (Wednesday). If you've any experience with DHL's tracking, you can't help but keep refreshing the page to see it's progress. 

Less than a few hours after arriving at Subang airport on Wednesday, their delivery facility and finally with the courier, I got my package!!! The local DHL guy (same guy who's been working the area for decades now at this point) recognised me from the previous job. 

No wonder I was charged for 3 lbs, it was still in the box that the seller/eBay GSP probably used. 

Would I use it again? Sure, why not I guess. Maybe for the smallish items.

My referral link here (we both get RM10 towards the shipping fee from HK to Malaysia).