How to buy USA products from the Philippines

In this blog post, I will share with you how you can buy USA products from the Philippines.

It really is a bummer when I particularly want to buy something from a USA-based online store but they do not directly ship to the Philippines. Like last year, I wanted an Amazon Kindle but the version that I fancied was not available for shipping to the Philippines at that time.

So, how do you buy USA products if you are in the Philippines?

You actually have three options:

The first option is purchasing these products from various stores on Shopee or Lazada, but its authenticity is, of course, not guaranteed.

The second option is ordering these products and requesting your relatives in the USA to include it in the Balikbayan boxes that they will be sent to the Philippines. This is, needless to say, only applicable for people who have families in the USA and who are willing to wait for months because, as we all know, it takes a few months for OFWs to fill up their boxes to get the most out of the very expensive shipping fee.

The third option is buying these products and having them delivered through third-party freight forwarders or carriers, such as Shipping Cart, Johnny Air, POBox.ph, and My Shopping Box.

Being my normal self—impatient—I did not want to wait for too long for my sibs‘ boxes, so I tried Johnny Air for the delivery of my Amazon Kindle.

Here are the steps to finally have those products that are only available in the USA:

1. Sign up with Johnny Air. You can also estimate the shipping cost here.

2. Order from any USA-based online stores. In the shipping address field of your order form, you can indicate Johnny Air’s addresses in New York or New Jersey or San Francisco, or Los Angeles.

3. Once you have the tracking number, email it together with your order details to info@johnnyairplus.com. 

4. They will reply to you with an estimated date of arrival and an estimated freight cost for pick-up. There is an additional charge if you want it to be delivered to your Metro Manila address. I am not really sure how do they accommodate deliveries outside Metro Manila.

5. Once the package is ready, Johnny Air Plus will notify you through an SMS or email.

6. You can personally collect your package either from their head office in Makati or from their branches in SM Megamall or Dian Makati. You can do your payment in cash or using a credit card upon pick-up. You can also have it fetched by a Grab driver.

Johnny Air also offers “ICE BOX“, their consolidated service for bulk orders, which I have yet to try if I will have the opportunity.

And, that is it.

I received my Kindle 1 month after I ordered it from Amazon. It took that long because there was an almost two-week wait for the availability of the Amazon Kindle version that I ordered.

Johnny Air Plus claims that the transit time from their addresses in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles is 5 to 7 working days during off-peak season and 7 to 10 working days during peak season upon shipment. Packages addressed to their New Jersey office will be forwarded to their New York base prior to shipment to Manila. An additional 2 to 3 working days of transit time from New Jersey to New York should be expected.

What freight forwarder do you use when you order stuff from the USA?

DISCLAIMER: This is not a sponsored post.