Hey there! Over here! Yes, that’s right, come hither. I’m ready for 2017 and my first post is one I’m genuinely excited to share. I’ve made a pact to myself to be more restrained on make-up purchases, but I am not going to pass up an opportunity on things that are difficult to source here.
The struggle to get make-up from the US is real especially when it can’t be shipped internationally. Slowly some brands have made their way over to our shores but there’s still a delay either with launches happening stateside months before they reach the UK or products are always out of stock here.
Well fear not! I’ve been using a great service from myMallBox which allows you to jump through hoops effortlessly and get your mitts on the likes of Colourpop, Ofra Cosmetics, Makeup Geek and more.
Actually the wonderful Selina from Miss Beauty Adikt has talked about myMallBox on her YouTube channel and with her reassurance and good experience, I signed up with them.
When you register with myMallBox, you get a free US address located within their warehouse. This means you can shop online with US-based companies and have your goods delivered to your US address. A lot of US brands will only ship within the US or some will charge a high fee to post to the UK plus you have the customs charges to contend with.
Whenever you shop online and forward to your US address you will receive a notification from myMallBox that your package has been received.
They will then await further instructions from you. You can wait to accumulate more deliveries or request for your packages to be consolidated into one and shipped across in a single delivery via a courier service such as DHL. This way you only pay one shipping charge instead of multiple ones.
I took advantage of the recent Black Friday sales and placed orders with Bath & Body Works, Ofra Cosmetics, Colourpop, Juvia’s Place and Anastasia Beverly Hills. Because of Black Friday and Cyber Monday isome of these brands were offering additional discounts so I made further savings.
Where possible I paid with PayPal just because it was convenient and despite the crappy exchange rate, the final costs weren’t bad. I mean, I picked up Anastasia Beverly Hill’s Glow Kit in Sundipped for less than £30. It costs £39 on the ABH UK site! By the way, this palette had been out of stock on Cult Beauty since last summer and I don’t think they’ve got it back in stock.
When I was ready, I asked myMallBox to ship my collective orders. Let me tell you, these guys are super-fast. They packed my orders on 20th December and two days later they were en route to be delivered. myMallBox had packed my orders very neatly and securely and all my products were intact.
Custom charges boils down to weight of the package and also which company you choose. You can log onto your control panel and adjust the weight of each package to reduce the potential custom charges to the minimum amount possible or you can go with what My MallBox estimates. Not to sound smug but I didn’t get any custom charges on my delivery.
Another perk with using myMallBox is there isn’t any sales tax when shipping your orders to their warehouse in Delaware. Yay!
myMallBox also offers additional services at a minimal cost (you can have photos sent of your orders unpackaged) but I went with the basic free one which is more than sufficient.
But before you get too excited, Sephora do NOT ship to myMallBox. I’ve been told they used to but I expect they cottoned on and put a block on it so unfortunately you will have to pay their extortionate international shipping and customs charges or fly to America and fill your suitcase. There are one or two other sites which also don’t ship to these virtual mail boxes (maybe Ulta?) but I can confirm the following do:
- Bath & Body Works
- Colourpop
- Makeup Geek
- Ofra Cosmetics
- Jeffree Star
- Morphe Cosmetics
- Juvia’s Place
- Dose of Colors
- Girlactik
Bear in mind there are certain items prohibited from being shipped outside the UK due to US export regulations and carrier restrictions. The obvious ones are fragrances and nail polishes, however I made the error of ordering a pack of Bath & Body Works hand sanitizing gels, and found out after that they are banned because they contain alcohol.
I actually checked the list of prohibited items on myMallBox’s site and I could not see anything that specified these were not allowed to be sent. In addition, Bath & Body Works split my order into two with my first one containing only one bottle of liquid hand soap and the second package with the remaining products including the hand sanitizing gels.
myMallBox were good to inform me but what followed was a bout of miscommunication. I assumed they had removed the item but it still showed up on the control panel. Confused over it, I failed to include when my orders were being consolidated and myMallBox later confirmed they would remove the hand sanitizing at the time of repackaging. Gah! So currently a good portion of my Bath & Body Works order still remains with myMallBox. I will have it shipped with the rest of my orders next time but I suspect it will be a heavier package as I have ordered some more of their liquid hand soaps (which are brilliant!)
Another thing to remember is myMallBox will only hold your packages for about three months so you need to plan what you’re going to buy in order to make the most of the service. Speaking of which, customer service from myMallBox is excellent – I can’t fault them.
And that’s it! So far it’s working brilliantly and I am chuffed with my swag of US make-up. If you want to give myMallBox a try, my referral code will bank you $5 towards your shipping costs. Just make sure you use this link.
Oh and if you want to see what I got from the Black Friday sales, then please subscribe YouTube channel as I will be uploading a video to it very soon.
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