Mailing magazines etc from UK to US - cheapest way?
 

My mum and also the Outlaws regularly send mags & newspapers from the UK. It costs them a small fortune.

Does anybody have any insights/ideas on how to do this as cheaply as possible - delivery times are really not critical!

Cheers

Harold Spider Esq.

Re: Mailing magazines etc from UK to US - cheapest way?
 

Check whether the magazines have an international subscription. I subscribed to one a couple of weeks ago and the yearly subs abroad still cost less than the monthly uk newsstand price.

Re: Mailing magazines etc from UK to US - cheapest way?
 

iPad.

Buy a subscription on there for normal prices and read it online.

Re: Mailing magazines etc from UK to US - cheapest way?
 

Thanks for these - hadn't considered that - partly because these are occasional events - i.e. not every edition...

That said it might be cheaper, from what you suggest, to get them on a local subscription and have every edition anyway...

Secretly, I think the parentage like to send these to us, part of keeping in touch...

Re: Mailing magazines etc from UK to US - cheapest way?
 

Some things, the local versions or international subs just aren't the same, with give away cover stuff, especially for kids magazines, which are just shit in the US.

My mother gets a few and wraps up and surface mails them now and again and as they're kids activities with silly games or toys rather than news type stuff, doesn't matter how long they take and they're much cheaper than the international subscription costs.

Re: Mailing magazines etc from UK to US - cheapest way?
 

Amazon.com does subscriptions to foreign magazines. Have them pay for the subscription then they dont need to worry about postage at all.

Re: Mailing magazines etc from UK to US - cheapest way?
 

Second the iPad solution. We have a subscription to The Times, which covers all 7 days including the full Sunday Times, for 2 pounds a week (I think it's 4 pounds now, we were grandfathered in as existing subscribers).

We also subscribe to the Economist via their own app, and use an app called Zinio to subscribe to a number of UK and US mags (ones about cars for hubby, Kiplinger's and BBC Good Food for me), along with using it to buy one-off editions based on particular articles, or as a 'going on holiday' extra treat.

I know what you mean about the parents wanting to send relief parcels, though. My mum sent over a box recently with Cadburys drinking chocolate, Hellmans mayo and so on, and the postage was probably double what the contents cost! I keep gently pointing out I live in the US, not the former USSR, and we have fully-stocked shops here including the fantabulous selection available via Amazon, but...

Re: Mailing magazines etc from UK to US - cheapest way?
 

I still subscribe to a couple of UK car magazines, two of them have iPad subscriptions and they're so much easier to deal with than the paper version it's not funny (even though I usually like paper versions better).

The one magazine that only comes in dead tree form is by now mailed out by the publisher's office staff with the regular mail because they got sick and tired of the magazines getting lost in the post when it was mailed out as a regular magazine rather than a letter. I think I had a six month stretch when they had to resend each issue...

If you have it sent to your family in the UK my suggestion would be to wait until a decent pile has accumulated there, box it up and use something like parcel2go to find the cheapest company to get the pile of paper over here. Keep in mind paper is heavy so it's not going to be cheap, but it might be cheaper than sending them individually and/or paying international subscription rates.