General Delivery: Getting Deliveries Abroad
When I was traveling, I sometimes had to make purchases online, especially in Australia. In this article, I will give you some of my tips for shopping online.
Buying online abroad thanks to general delivery.
There is a very practical thing in Australia, which is the general delivery system!
What is general delivery?
It is a postal service that allows you to pick up any mail sent to you under your name. So during my trip to Australia, I was able to have letters, my tax declaration, or parcels sent to this general delivery service even though I did not have a fixed address.
You just have to write the address like this:
First name, LAST NAME
General Delivery (NB: same word in English and French)
General Post Office
City
Country
For example, for me in Sydney:
Stefan Tanned
General Delivery
GPO
Sydney NSW 2000
Australia
There are general delivery services in almost every country.
However, mail is not kept indefinitely but only for 1 month; imagine the piles of mail if no one went to pick up their mail after several months.
If you want to have a parcel sent abroad, allow time to receive it and go pick up your parcel within the allotted time.
I have had my contact lenses delivered several times via the internet to general delivery offices in the cities where I was going to land; it’s very practical, thanks to general delivery!
General delivery abroad
General delivery mail is often sorted last, so allow 5 days to 1 week for receipt at the general delivery office in your destination city.
Abroad, the general delivery system works differently depending on the country. Each country operates differently.
It can also happen that mail or parcels get lost, so be careful not to send money or valuable items to yourself.
If you do not pick up your mail, it will be returned to the sender, but abroad nothing is certain!
I have tried the general delivery system in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, but it is supposed to work in all countries where there is a general delivery system.
Testing the general delivery system
So I wanted to do a test but in Paris. I needed to make some online purchases and I ordered several things.
I carefully filled in the delivery address with the general delivery address and my name.
As soon as the online purchase was confirmed, I waited for my parcel to be sent. Between order processing and shipping, less than a day passed since I ordered on a Thursday evening and received the shipping confirmation on Friday afternoon. Thanks for this speed.
So I showed up 2 days later on Wednesday morning before going to work and I went to the post office near my home, nothing at all, they had not received the parcel. I came back on Friday, and they had my parcel!!
Thanks general delivery!!
And you? Have you had the chance to use general delivery abroad or to shop online abroad?
