Sending my first Balikbayan Box

[Capstone]

Ray & KFC,

Thanks for the information. So I guess the shipping companies must just give you a general time frame as to when your boxes should arrive at their destinations?

[Ray]

Ray & KFC,

Thanks for the information. So I guess the shipping companies must just give you a general time frame as to when your boxes should arrive at their destinations?

They won't guarantee anything. If you ask them when the box will be delivered, they will give you an educated guess, but that's it.

With he company that I use, if it has been 60 days and still no delivery, they will get on the phone to the Philippines and track it down for you. When I have needed to do this, it was usually delivered within the next 2-3 days.

If it isn't going to Metro Manila or Luzon, they will need to transfer it to another ship going to the island of final destination, then by truck to the delivery address.

Ray

[Bob_S]

Most of these Balikbayan Box forwarders do those exclusively. Some are LBC, Pentagon Cargo, Manila Forwarders, Atlas, etc…

There seems to be a big business in these Balik boxes.  Unfortunately, none of these companies seem to service Japan.  Too bad.  Back when the post office still had surface mail, we could send "luggage" to my wife's mom a couple months before we'd go, reducing the amount of crap we'd have to lug through the airport.  Not so, anymore.  All postal packages go by air mail.  So it gets costly if we wanted to send extra clothes and baby supplies ahead.  Now we have to take it all to the airport, then use a luggage forwarding service at the other end to reduce our baggage we have to tote through the train stations.  Though we could still use surface postal delivery from Japan to the U.S.  Eh.  Go figure.

[thekfc]

The Balikbayan Box arrived today.
They picked it up from my location on February 26th & was delivered on April 9th - so 42 days. But I think that it may have missed the cutoff deadline & didn't leave until March 5th (if that is the case then that would give it 35 days).

Ahya haven't open up the package yet to check the contents but the box wasn't crushed or damaged on the outside.
I will find out about the status of the contents tomorrow.

[Ray]

42 days is about the norm for boxes I've shipped from San Diego to Mindanao via LBC. That's door-to-door time. That seems long for the Manila area.

My theory is that shipping time is shorter before Christmas when most people are shipping. If they don’t have enough boxes to fill a container, they will likely wait another week to ship it, since they pay by the container. Even though they say a shipment goes out every week, I don’t necessarily buy that.

Ray

[thekfc]

I do think that the box didn't actually leave on the day they told me. It was picked up on the 26th, so it missed the cut-off for that week & would then be leaving on the 5th.I called the weekend after the 5th for a tracking number but they didn't have one yet - I received it a few days later.

The entire content was intact except one item - a chocolate fragrant candle - it melted. Wow a candle actually melted. If a candle would melt, imagine what would happen to a softer item like chocolate. But they did like the smell of inside of the box.  .

One thing that I forgot to do was label the items - who get what. I jokingly told Ahay "you decide who get what", but we went down the list & divided most of them.

I think that she was more excited to actually receive the box than the contents - she didn't open the box until today.
She said I "wanted to look at it"  

In the end she was extremely happy to receive the box & it contents.

Now I am working on the next box (es) which I want to arrive just before my next trip.  

[Ray]

LOL!

Yep, if the box sits out in that hot tropical sun for a few hours, evrerything inside will melt.

When you send chocolate, it's a good idea to enclose some plastic spoons... 

Ray

[Jeff S]

... or straws.