Hi friends. I’m buying a bike off of Facebook marketplace, and I’m a bit nervous about the shipping aspect. The seller is suggested bikeflights, but I haven’t used it before. Can someone give me a quick and dirty explanation of how that works? I would prefer that an expert packs the bike, I don’t know the sellers level of experience when it comes to that thing. Have any of you bought used and shipped with bikeflights, anything I should know?
Also, any ideas what I should expect for cost? Thanks everyone.
Essentially BF is a company that simply gets good shipping rates through FedEx. That’s it. How they or you pack the bike is up to you. Insurance is up to you/seller as well. Cost depends on weight and how big of a box you choose to pack the bike. IIRC you can go to their website and use their tools to figure all this out.
I read that BikeFlights and FedEx got a divorce and that they now use UPS, and that prices went way up as a result. No personal experience, just what I read online.
I quoted NYC to Paris once and it was laughably high. Like $700. I bought a bike ninja case instead, checked as normal bag. Worked great except now XL is out of business . They were so cheap to fly that route.
I used them to ship a bike for me I sold on Ebay. It was about 20% cheaper than shipping with UPS if I remember right. Otherwise it’s exactly the same as UPS and you print a UPS label and put that label on your box, so it basically is UPS with bikeflights providing a front end website and a discount.
. They were so cheap to fly that route.