How to Start Shopping in the US: 7 Steps to International Shopping
To shop in American stores, sign up with Pochtoy and get a free personal address at our warehouse in Delaware, where the sales tax is 0%. Order items to this address yourself or through our buyout service, and we will consolidate your parcels for free and ship them to Russia, Kazakhstan or Belarus.
Online shopping in the US – is convenient and often profitable: clothes, electronics and shoes in American stores can often be bought cheaper than in Russia and the CIS countries.
For many people who are just starting to figure out shopping abroad, everything seems confusing and even a little scary. In fact, ordering from US stores with delivery to Russia or other countries is no harder than ordinary online shopping.
This article – is for those who have never bought from American online stores but have long wanted to try. Shopping in the US – is easy, interesting and truly profitable!
Step 1. How does it all work?
In order to shop in the US and receive your purchases in your country, first of all you need to choose a mail forwarding company.
Mail Forwarding (or «your address abroad», an intermediary) – is a service in which you make purchases yourself and use the addresses of the intermediary company's warehouses abroad.
Pochtoy.com is a mail forwarder that provides every customer with a free personal address in the US for receiving, storing and further shipping your purchases.
It's simple: all you need to do is go through a quick registration on our website, fill out your profile and get your personal address in the US!
We also have a buyout service: our professional staff can buy the item for you if you don't have a foreign card.
It's time to start placing your first orders in US stores!
Step 2. What do you need to place orders in US stores?
First of all, in order to shop in the US on your own, you need to have a personal payment card to pay for purchases. American stores accept Visa and Mastercard cards. But it is important that yours was not issued by a sanctioned bank. You can also pay via PayPal registered in your country. Russian PayPal accounts do not work right now – in this case the buyout service will help: we will pay for the item, and you top up your balance with a Russian bank card.
For buying items in American online stores, we recommend opening a dollar card at a foreign bank – in this case you pay directly in dollars and lose nothing on conversion. Although, of course, you can also shop with a card in your country's currency, and top up the balance in your personal account with a Kazakhstani or Belarusian bank card (the balance itself is kept in dollars). The main thing is that the card has online purchases enabled (you can check with your bank).
For the buyout service, a Russian bank card with which you can top up the balance of your personal account will be enough. You can also top up your balance with cryptocurrency.
Step 3. How and where to buy?
There are a huge number of stores in the US where you can find literally anything. On our website you will find a list of popular options to start with, but you are not limited – you can order from any store of your choice.
The checkout process in American online stores, as a rule, looks like this:
- registration (email and password)
- entering the delivery address (the address you were given for our warehouse)
- adding payment information (your card details)
- selecting items and paying
- waiting for the order to be shipped to the warehouse
Usually the store sends the parcel to our warehouse within a few days. You can find detailed step-by-step instructions for placing orders in specific stores here. In general, the process is practically the same in all American online stores.
Step 4. The order has been placed in the store, what's next?
In essence, the hardest and scariest part is already behind you. Now all that's left is to wait until the store (seller) ships the order and provides a tracking number for tracking the parcel within the US.
Where can you track tracking numbers (parcels within the US)?
Most purchases made in US stores are shipped by the three largest delivery services in America:
- USPS — the US state postal service (United States Postal Service);
- UPS — an American commercial company (United Parcel Service);
- Fedex — another commercial delivery service (Federal Express).
If the store shipped your order with some other service, you can always track the order in your store account.
After the store (seller) has provided the tracking number, you need to enter it in expected parcels with us. As soon as the parcel is received by the warehouse, it will appear in your personal account (you will receive an SMS notification or an email about this).
Step 5. The parcel is at the warehouse, what now?
There are two options here.
- Immediately after the first order arrives at the warehouse, prepare the parcel for shipping;
- Wait for your other purchases and combine them all together into one parcel (consolidate).
Consolidation — is the combining of several parcels (orders) into one common parcel. Consolidation is free, but with the SuperFast and FastBox tariffs parcels are not combined – each one is shipped as it arrived.
The second option can be called more profitable, since the greater the weight of your parcel, the better the delivery terms. You need to take into account here that delivery services usually charge the most for the first kilogram, while each subsequent one is significantly cheaper.
The first method (shipping right away) we recommend if you didn't plan to buy anything else in the near future and don't need to combine several orders into one parcel.
We offer free storage of all your purchases at the warehouse for 70 days.
Step 6. The parcel needs to be shipped, but how?
First of all, you need to choose a delivery service. You can calculate the delivery cost in advance and decide on a delivery service in our delivery calculator. You can read in detail about each delivery service, maximum weight restrictions and so on in the questions and answers section.
Once you have decided on a delivery service, you can proceed to preparing the parcel and sending it for packing.
When the parcels have arrived at the warehouse (all the ones you want to send now) and appeared on the Purchases at the warehouse tab, you need to select the parcels and add them to the parcel being created (the «Add to parcel» button).
Step 7. The final and most enjoyable one
After the parcel is shipped from the warehouse, an international tracking number will appear next to it, which you can use to track the parcel's movement. Once the parcel is available for pickup, you will receive a notification (an email notification in your mailbox or an SMS message about handing the parcel over to a courier, for example). To receive the parcel, you must have identity documents (a passport) with you.
We recommend checking the contents of the parcel and the integrity of the items in the presence of postal operators or delivery service staff. After checking the parcel, take it home and enjoy your new purchases!
As you can see from this article, buying in the USA with delivery to Russia (and other countries) is really simple and easy. If any points remain unclear to you, you can always ask your questions in tickets in your personal account or to an operator in the online chat.
