Have you taken a look at the costs of shipping with IKEA? It is absolutely ridiculous! If you search the web for customers that shop at IKEA, you will find that many of them travel up to 4 hours to shop there because the cost is so much less to drive and pay for gas than it is to ship the goods.
I mean, who in their right mind would pay $230 for shipping of a desk that only cost them $300. It just doesn't make any sense. Well, I did some research. There is a company in the Northeast that has a Personal Shopping service. The company name is Bongo International. They can have the packages shipped locally to their warehouse at a low cost and then they will forward the packages to you via UPS, FedEx, or DHL. They also will ship internationally, which is cool because IKEA doesn't allow for international shipping.
One major point you need to keep in mind is that courier companies charge either the weight or the dimensional weight...which ever is greater. You need to educate yourself on this stuff because it can make a huge difference when you get the final bill. Just because your package weighs 5lbs, it doesn't mean it will be charged as a 5lb shipment.
