Personal Shopper service
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Personal Shopper Service in US shops
As you probably already know International shopping can become quite difficult and complicated.
But we have a solution for you - a special shopping service called Personal Shopper - our trained shopping agents will save you problems, time and money. Principle of this service is easy: you choose products you want to buy and then send the internet link to our customer support, as your shopping request. We check the reputation of the seller or shop for you and also let you know, if the product you want to buy is overpriced or if there are any other hidden costs. We also lookup sale coupons and sale deals for your specific shopping.
Personal shopper shops not only at online stores, but also on Ebay, where we bid for you
and watch the auction on your behalf. You just give use auction URL and maximum bid and we will take care of everything else.
All personal shopping is directed to our address in So San Francisco, where we can personally make sure
that everything is delivered as ordered.
The fee for this service is 5% from the price of purchase, the minimum charge is $5.
Fees are rounded up to whole dollar.
Attention: Customers with Gold accounts have Personal Shopper Service FREE OF CHARGE.
How to place an order through Personal Shopper Service
The complete procedure is as follows. Those of you who already signed up for Forwardo account can skip to step #3.
1. Forwardo account signup
by signing up into Forwardo account you automatically gain access to Customer Support Department.
2. Setting up your Mailbox
Mailbox service is integrated into Forwardo account, you will be able to choose from several different acount types during signup procedure.
Mailbox, your physical address in the U.S. is used for all you purchases, to collect all the shipment and then consolidate them and ship to your home address or any address in the World, see step #7.
3. Creation of your shopping list
To create this list takes only few minutes, but we will guide you through this process in detail,
so it will become really easy for you:
There are several options how to create your shopping list :
- Save the web page with the shopping cart content as .html file, then rename it according to example below and attach the file into your order in customer support.
- Copy the page into your favorite text editor, for example into MS word. It is easy - press Ctrl + A buttons while in your browser (select all), you will select the whole screen, then switch into the text editor and press Ctrl + V (paste). This way the whole shopping cart including pictures will be copied into the new document (this may require patience of few seconds for everything to be copied). Then you save this document named according to the instruction bellow and attach it to your order.
- PDF file - you can save your cart as PDF file (you basically print the page into PDF file) ... you can get PDF writer application for free, resulting file can be attached to the order.
- List of products to order in text format with direct hyperlinks should contain all of this:
- URL of the product (address of the page copied from your browser)
- the name of the product
- number of pieces to order
- the price per item (sometimes price can be subject of change, we wanna make sure we order the right item for the right price)
- product variations (color, size, etc..)
When you copy URL remember, that we need a link to the detail of your item,
not the web page listing all the items in certain category.
Also do not send us link to your shopping cart, because shopping cart content is not transferable from one computer to another and we would see it as empty.
Attention: While shopping at multiple stores, please separate items to order per store. Consider placing separate orders for each store on your list.
Rules for naming your attachment files
If you wanna send us the list of items as attachment, the name of the file should be as follows
00000-Lastname-Storename-20241013.doc
00000 - is number of your account
Lastname - your last name, no umlauts, no hooks or funny characters
Storename - the store name, no spaces (for example oldnavy, victoriasecret)
Date - in a format of year month day, eg. 2011 03 01 - but without spaces
Example: file created in MS Word 1383-Zuckerberg-tigerdirect-20110301.doc
You can send your lists in standard document formats:
- textual in formats .txt, .rtf, .doc, .docx
- spreadsheets in formats .xls, .xlsx
- PDF files .pdf, .pdfx
- saved website pages in formats .html, .htm, .mht
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4. How to deposit money for shopping
How do I know how much money to deposit and where? Follow these instructions:
To find out the cost
- The fees for personal shopping service are
Hi5 - simplified charge:
- 5% from the total shopping amount, rounded up, minimum is 5 USD.
So if the 5% is less then 5 USD then we automatically charge 5 USD.
For example 3 pcs of winter clothing for 127 USD will cost you 7 USD in fees.
- Shopping Quote Calculator
You can avoid complicated calculations by using our clever Quote Calculator that will try its best to specify all expenses for your purchase and the amount to deposit to your account.
link: Shopping Quote Calculator (in new browser window)
Tips for using the Calculator:
if you are shopping in multiple stores and need to add individual shopping
costs without shipping home, choose "purchase only"
and separate shopping by entering estimated weight in Shipping Calculator later.
Transfer funds to an account
Deposits to your account differ by your home country, all countries have available direct deposit to Paypal account, deposit by major credit card (VISA, Mastercard, American Express) or wire transfer (for larger amounts).
We have also established local bank accounts in our main destinations to save you money, time and make the deposits even more secure. You can check deposit options for your country in Deposit Wizard, you will find detailed instructions for each option there.
- Deposit to bank account
- we charge fee of 2.4% of the deposited amount that covers currency exchange and wire transfers to the United States.
- Paypal
account: paypal@forwardo.com
- in description insert number of your account (with prefix 212)
- always deposit funds in USD currency
- Paypalu fee for depositis 3.9% + 0.35 USD from transaction
Forwardo does not charge any fees on deposits through Paypal.
Additional information to deposits
- Each transaction must be accompanied with number of your account with prefix 212
- When sending money in different currency than USD keep in mind that exchange ratio changes every day and send about 2-3% more to cover possible spikes in currency exchange. Difference will be available on your account for further transactions.
How long does each transfer take?
- Wire Transfers through online banking or through a personal banker
- within the same bank (CSOB do CSOB, RB/EB to RB, WF to WF) ... 1 day
- in between different banks ... usually 3 work days
- cash deposit at your local bank
- credited and available same day
- Paypal
- deposits transferred between accounts immediately, collectively credited once a day between 10-11.30 am PST (work days only), accounts are than being checked continualy and deposits credited as they arrive during our work hours
Bank deposits are credited colectively every work day between 10-11.30 am PST. Bank deposits are being processed just once a day to prevent duplicite credits
If you planning multiple purchases send the funds all together you will save on related fees. You can keep your balance positive for immediate use, shopping, shipping, payments, etc.
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5. Placing the order
You will place you order as new ticket in online customer support within user administration (do not send orders bz email!)
You can attach upto three files (2MB max size) to the initial order, if you need to attach more files, post the order first and then you can add as many new posts as you need with 3 attachments each.
Remember that every shop means separate order and we want you to open new ticket for each each order to keep information in order.
Customer support application then lets you watch order status and communicate changes in the order.
Each reply in customer support is confirmed to your email address registered with Forwardo.
6. The Completion of your order
As soon as your order is placed and complete, you will receive a message from our customer support
and also a message about the completed transaction. In this message you will get your code of transaction and receipt.
You will not receive a tracking number of your packages, since sellers never give those at the time of buy.
The time of delivery depends on many circumstances like the chosen type of carrier (the cheapest transportation Ground is not via air and it is the slowest one), the location of the seller (small town can extend delivery up to 2 days),
the expeditive days of the seller (some sellers send only 2 days a week), and distances where USA is divided into 6 shipping zones, the time of placing the order, weekends, holidays, winter season and local weather conditions.
Usually your package will arrive within 4-10 of work days (business days) to your Forwardo Mailbox.
After your package is delivered, you will receive email about this delivery. Do not be confused by the names on your delivered package, since many sellers code their names into different symbols.
For example Apple uses "Al", BuyDig a Abes of Maine "ACC", LEGO at Home "LBRI" etc.
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7. Shipping from your Mailbox to your home (to you)
Your delivered packages are not automatically shipped from your US mail box to you.
It is simply, because we do not know if you are expecting more packages to be delivered to your Mail box later or in the same time, since you may place some of your orders separately on your own.
You will create New outbound shipment, find this link in section
My account > My mailbox of user administration.
There you will assemble your shipment by adding individual packages stored in your Mailbox, which you would like to be sent to you (you control this by checking each package into the complete Outbound shipment). Also you need to fill out information about your declared value of the shipment, insurance and any other notes you have for us and you wish to have fulfilled by expedition team.
The system will calculate estimated price for shipping, this is based on the estimated
weight of all the individual packages included in your outbound shipment and also on your choice of the postal carrier and insurance.
If you agree with the estimated price and have all the necessary funds ready
in your account, you can close the shipment. This way our expedition will receive
a signal to prepare your shipment for postal service to be expedited.
The process of expediting your shipment can take up to 3 days but usually the shipments are expedited the same day when you close it. Shipments are expedited only Monday to Friday, except for federal holidays.
In busy seasons, like a month before Christmas, might happen that shipments wait in outbound queue for one day to be sent out. This however happens rarely.
If there is an urgent matter and you need to ship out the package immediately, please write us directly to our customer support, do not write urgent request into the note at the shipment consolidation.
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8. Customs and VAT
All shipment from USA must go through a customs of each receiving country. We are not responsible for any customs charges and VAT payments, those are solely responsibility of shipment recipient.
The base for calculating the possible custom fees is your declared value of the shipment.
Shipments with declared price over $299 need to be accompanied with invoices from the sellers. In this case, you can send those to our customer support for us to print them and add them to the postal declaration.
Your original invoices are also put in your package. In a case these invoices are not present, you can ask our customer support for assistance of sending you the copies.
9. What and Where cannot be purchased for our customers
Where: Personal shopping is done only at USA and Canadian online stores with its delivery at our So San Francisco address. We cannot place orders in other countries because of banking restrictions (mailing address must match the address issued on credit card) and also for limited access to problem solving with international sellers, not mentioning possible fraud without a proper protection of bank institutions.
What: We cannot personally shop for prescription medications, real weapons, drugs and any other items in conflict with USA law. And new Apple iPhone. We are also unable to process orders in several online shops, namely Abercrombie and Fitch, Hollister Co. and there are certain limitation with Victorias Secret.
All online shops are checked up before we place orders for you, to make sure that the shop is credible and trustworthy. We do that through our database of shops, to protect you.
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