Shipping to the US from Cairo

Josie posted this on one of the groups that I belong to in Egypt : I thought others too can benefit from this information. So I'm posting it here with her permission.

Dear All,

I have been looking into ways to ship books and other materials to the US over the past couple days and thought I'd post some current prices and details:

FedEx:
10kg box is 1155 LE
25kg box is 1527 LE
2-day shipping to any address
1079 corniche al-nil, garden city
Saturday-thursday 11-8
02-795-2803
http://www.fedex.com/eg/dropoff/?link=4

If your stuff takes up a 10-kg box space-wise, you pay the full price even if your stuff doesn't actually weigh that much. They accept credit cards.

DHL
15 kg box, 1603 LE
20 kg box, 2267 LE
25 kg box, 2480 LE
35 kg box, 3146 LE
phone 02-302-9801
ships to any address
http://www.dhlegypt.com/

Post Office
ships to any address
takes one - three weeks
150 LE for the first kg, 33 LE for each additional 1/2 kg.

Dar al-Salam Publisher
Mr. Qadri, 02-270-4280
30 LE/kg for shipping to a major airport. This includes the carton which holds about 40 kg, but not the cost of transport to the airport here in Cairo. I could not get them to confirm that they ship to airports such as Seattle rather than just New York. They also have cheaper shipping by sea, but this still just goes to the port, not your home. And they have to have enough people going to same place to merit combining them into a 13-carton container. I was told this is not currently an option.

Leila Books
http://www.leilabooks.com/contact.php
Ships to home addresses, takes 3-4 weeks.
40 LE per kg, meaning a 20-kg carton is about $150.
Price includes boxing, shipping, etc.
Books can be dropped off at the office anytime between 9am and 4 pm except fridays.

Express International
You can also try http://www.expressintl.com.eg/services.htm

Airline Excess Baggage
This varies by airline, but even on Lufthansa, which seems expensive, this turned out to be my cheapest option this time.
It's $50 per bag that exceeds the 23 kg limit up to 32 kg.
And $155 per extra bag, at 23 kg, plus $50 more for up to 32 kg.
They might have a limit of about 100 kg excess baggage per person (according to a website), but they didn't seem entirely familiar with that here in the Zamalek office or at the airport -- I was told no problem bringing a few extra bags.

cheers,
josie

Edited 2 Feb 2007 to add :

Dear All,

In December I posted a list of options and prices for shipping books from Cairo to the US.

I shipped some of my books in late December through Leila Books and they just arrived here in Washington state, so I thought I would post a follow-up now that I have successfully used this shipper.

The books took slightly longer than the quoted time period -- about 5 or 6 weeks instead of 3 or 4. This may be because I'm on the west coast and I imagine the books got off a container ship on the east coast at least a week ago. They arrived via the US post office.

The packing job is amazing, the best I have ever seen. At Leila Books you just drop off the books and they do the customs clearance and packing, so I wasn't sure what to expect. What I got was a tear-proof sack, with Leila's address and my address clearly printed on the sides, securely sewn shut around a cardboard box that was also bound shut inside this sack with two invincible straps encircling the box. Inside the box was extra padding, then my books nicely packed inside a plastic bag. It was beautiful I tell you.

One other note -- in the current "Key to Cairo" given to AUC students, the prices quoted for Leila are no longer valid. The prices listed there are significantly lower than the current ones,
because the older pricing system was for an "M Bag" service that Leila and other shippers are no longer able to provide (I forgot why, but the owner also said a lot of books had gone astray under that system).

Here's their info again:
Leila Books
http://www.leilabooks.com/contact.php
Ships to home addresses, takes about a month (See above).
40 LE per kg, meaning a 20-kg carton is about $150.
Price includes boxing, shipping, etc.
Books can be dropped off at the office (off midan Mustafa Kamel downtown) anytime between 9am and 4 pm, except fridays.

Josie