Have you ever looked online and seen something you love; only to realise it is only sold in another country? I know I have, and sometimes there is a way around it. For instance, some stores ship worldwide and there are companies out there that will act as a middleman. The trouble with this, however, is it often costs you a lot more, and if you decide to use a business as a middleman it can be tricky to work out all the ins and outs of it as well.
In fact, a whole lot of work has to go into getting you an order from abroad via the postal system.
So I was interested when online shopping company Grabr got in touch – they allow you to shop the globe, but it is done with a difference.
Grabr is a peer-to-peer delivery network and works as so: Let’s say for example there is a pair of shoes you would just love to own in New York; you log onto Grabr, sign up as a consumer and set up an order. This can be done in a couple of ways: you can choose to search the Grabr shop filled with things other people have asked for, you can paste a link from a website, and lastly, if you’re not 100% sure of what you are after, you can manually enter all the details about the item.
Once you have found the item you want you need to set up the order, which will cost you:
The RRP of your chosen item.
Traveller’s reward – this is how much you are willing to pay the traveller to bring the item to you.
Service fee – this is 7% of the total.
Once you have completed all that, you sit back and wait for someone who it travelling from your items location, to your home town (or nearby) and is willing to pick up a bit of extra spending money by bringing you your goods.
What happens if the traveller doesn’t bring me my goods?
Grabr holds on to all the money until the item has been delivered, so you can be safe in the knowledge that no goods means you will get the money back.
All of this means the process of getting goods via Grabr is a lot less complex, cutting out all those middlemen, which in turn cuts down the chance of it getting lost in transit.
What’s more: if you are a traveller yourself, you can sign up to be a Grabr Traveller for people seeking items and look to earn yourself some more money.
Personally I am really interested to see how Grabr works and I have set up a grab for a personalised pet pillow from Moscow – can you imagine Sally on a pillow how cute! Hopefully, someone will agree to bring it over to me and I can update you on just how Grabr works.
What do you think of the idea of Grabr, would you give it a try?
Katarina
Saturday 19th of March 2016
I simply adore this post! Sometimes it can be confusing for me, the process of international shipping! Thanks for explaining it so clearly!
Mary Madalene
Thursday 17th of March 2016
Grabr sounds like an awesome company! Do they deal with all the currencies or is it in just 1 main one?
Gem Cook
Wednesday 16th of March 2016
Thank you for sharing this post. Such an interesting read. Thank you!
WhatLauraLoves
Tuesday 15th of March 2016
This sounds like such a great idea. I think it could end up getting quite costly so I think the item would definitely have to be worth it but I think its something id use xxx
gemma hendry
Monday 14th of March 2016
enjoyed reading this post greatly