Hi all. I need to do a small amount of printing on US Letter sized paper. This is the standard size for printing paper in the US but unfortunately it is not in use in the rest of the world and I can’t get any in Australia. The best I can do at the moment is get an office supplies shop to do a custom cut for me, but that’s going to cost $35 plus the paper itself, so about $40 for one ream. I’ve tried Amazon but none of the paper suppliers seem to ship internationally. Do any of you, particularly the expat Americans, know of somewhere in the US that will ship a ream of paper to Australia?
Good question. The major suppliers in the US are Staples and Office Max, as I live in the US they will of course ship to me, you would have to check them yourself. You might throw yourself on the mercy of some doper in the US who would go and pick up a ream and ship it in exchange for your paying for it. 
Ok. Neither of those ship internationally (Staples has an Australian store but they only carry metric sizes :(). Do you know of any dopers who would be willing to purchase and ship to me ;)?
Even in the UK, which is geographically more proximate, I couldn’t get it. Had to pay for a custom cut. Grumble grumble international standards, exceptionalism, grumble.
Hmm, a custom cut may still comparable in price to shipping a ream of paper from the US anyway.
Let me scrounge a ream of paper and get my roomie to run it to the post office and get a price for shipping, what city in Australia would it be to [though I am not sure that there would be any difference in price.]
They’re still reaming you though.
Boom boom!
It would be to Adelaide. Thanks in advance for getting your roomie to do this thing. I don’t want high quality paper by the way, in fact it needs to be fairly thin, whatever the thinnest normally available paper is. 20lb?
Nitpick: you write on stationery with and E as in pen, you ride on a stationary bicycle with an A as in ass.
(The thread title kept bugging me: shipping stationary is an oxymoron)
Huh, yeah. I even did a quick google search to confirm the spelling because I suspected I’d got it wrong. Pity I didn’t read the links properly.
One bit of sad trivia:
I teach at a college and in a Photoshop/Illustrator class I was teaching, I asked my beginner students to design their own business card and stationery.
They did well with the business card, but I saw only two or three people working on the stationery.
Why?
The others had no clue what “stationery” meant. They had never heard of it.
I had to describe it and a few said, “Oh, you mean ‘letterhead’!”
Even then, a few didn’t know what that was either.
I guess personal stationery is becoming a relic like rotary dials on phones
Regarding shipping stationery for us old folk who know what it is, doesn’t the USPS have a one fee box to ship internationally? It if fits in the box, it costs the same if you send a ream of paper or a handkerchief. (For those who don’t know what a handkerchief is, Google it…)
If memory serves that single price is only inside the US … that is why I am going to have my roomie check=)
I believe you are referring to the Flat Rate Priority Mail boxes (Priority Mail is not always the cheapest way to ship). Here are the international rates.
Note that US Domestic boxes are limited to 70 lbs, while the International Flat Rate Boxes are limited to 20 lbs (large and medium boxes) and 4 lbs (small boxes and envelopes).
A ream of 8.5 x 11 paper boxed for mailing would be about six pounds. The cheapest USPS rate for that to Australia is $43.23 (with the online discount) in the Priority Mail International Medium Flat Rate Box. The box is code number O-FRB1, which is 11" X 8.5" X 5.5", so you could ship 2.5 or 3 reams in it, for the same postage cost.
You can get shipping estimates here:
http://ircalc.usps.gov/?country=10013
A medium flat-rate Priority Mail box (for up to 20 pounds) would be 45 dollars.
Going First Class mail (which can be somewhat slow), a 3 pound box would be 25ish dollars. I couldn’t get it to give me a price quote for anything heavier than that.
Bottom line: it’s wicked expensive to ship something like that overseas :(.
First class international is only available for packages up to four pounds.
The post office used to offer surface rates, which were cheaper (of course it’d generally take a month or two for the package to get there), but they discontinued them several years ago.
While I can’t help you with your immediate problem, I sympathise – I’m just the opposite, and prefer the metric sizes which are next to impossible to get in the States. I bring reams of A4 as well as lined writing tablets and A5 notebooks back with me when I return from the UK.
My partner likes to torment me when I’m visiting by tearing up a random sheet of it in front of me while saying, ‘Ah, look what I’m doing to this precious, precious sheet of delicious A4.’. :mad:
LOL roomie headed out before all the replies, and she did get a quote of $45 for the medium shipper.
It would be cheaper to get the stationers to make the custom order. 
Ah, but the shop probably is stationary, so no oxymoron.
Do you live near an IKEA? They sell mixed packs of A3 and A4 in white and colors as kids’ drawing paper.