I paid GBP 84 for 4 packs of Huel & GBP 41 for the shipping to SE Asia
Upon arrival of the package here I was charged an additional GBP 40 as customs taxes.
What can I say but ouch! ouch! ouch!
I do know the customs cost is due to arrival via Fedex.
Could the team please look into Premium Airmail shipping ( which is also tracked ) and almost never dutiable.
I frequently order supplements from iherb dot com - add a few things into the cart and take a look at the courier / mail shipping options they provide at reasonable prices by weight / location.
I used to live in south america and I can share the pain and explain a bit further. Fedex usually has people who work at the borders and specialise in trying to get the most money out of people receiving packages in customs handling, there’s people who work full time in handling this cases.
Normal mail gets checked randomly and usually has better reach to a local customs office, while Fedex tends to force you to go to the main international airport in the country, which sometimes tends to be quite the trip just to pick up a product.
I now live in Britain so I understand how companies tend to use things like Fedex, but it’s a real pain for international shoppers. I personally had one experience with them and then proceeded to seen any Fedex shipping as a no-no, dissuading me 100% from purchasing.
I know this can really help me with weight loss & I should be at least consuming Huel twice daily.
( right now to stretch my portion / budget I take it Weekdays daily once & none over the weekends which helps keeps my hunger stable most day & energy levels are good - but weight remains same not lowering ).
Is it against the rules to suggest diy soylent? I think Huel looks like a better product than soylent, but they do have this page full of recipes, if you can’t acquire Huel you can try making one of the recipes in there that fits the products you have available and exactly how you want to tune it.
I just buy Huel because I’m lazy, I don’t want to mess up and it’s super cheap if you live in the UK.
apparently this laziness you mention is not exclusive to you
I feel it’s easy to mess up on the macronutrient profile when one starts substituting with local alternatives.
Secondly it would be no easy task to source good pea / vegan protein etc. which also need to be shipped separately in as they are speciality stuff here. It seems best to leverage off existing product ( soylent does not even ship outside the states ) Also retail quality pea / rice protein here on the shelf has loads of sugar with poor price points.
It’s the shipping logistics that need a bit of switcheroo here not huel
Each month I import from the States 1 tub of ON ( Optimum Nutrition ) whey protein weighing 2 lbs ( $30 ) + a princely sum of USD 6 for shipping & zero customs duties ( all legal via the USPS postal mail service ). It takes 3 weeks to reach so I need to plan my orders to stagger their arrival. The satiety is less than Huel for me and the focus is too much on protein as compared to other nutrients - hence the attempt to embrace Huel.
Fedex goes by the Shipping Via Bill - which says this contains ( nutritional supplements ) so let’s tax - but they tack on their administrative fees / freight fees / GST + a dash of of convoluted calculations to derive a fee to be paid.
If I was paying double for a whole month’s supply it hurts but can try - but obviously when I add 8 packets of Huel ( as compared to 4 now ) the corresponding shipping weight & fedex charges increase and make it very disproportionate to sustain over time.
Complaints aside here’s a suggestion -
My request is for HUEL team / Julian to consider < local shippers or UK Mail - global economy shipping with some tracking > as an option to ship. Surely it would be much cheaper than Fedex & I’m willing to be your first trial for this. We will learn about costs / delivery time / reliability / customs duties etc. and if it’s suitable perhaps more folks can benefit from this.
Hi diva, which country did you ship to? I’m looking for experiences shipping to SE Asia and you’re the first person I’ve come across. Planning to put in a big order to Singapore but wasn’t sure how it would work with customs etc. Thanks!
