Some years ago, I wrote about successfully ordering from Shoptomydoor, a Nigerian door-to-door shipping service that appears to have gone defunct now. There was no official announcement, but their website has disappeared, so I assume that’s all she wrote. The actual experience buying from Shoptomydoor was great, but somehow I never really needed anything from the UK/US that I couldn’t get someone to bring, so I didn’t use them again.
However, now that it’s June 2025 and the cedi to dollar exchange rate has improved vastly but meanwhile the Ghanaian retailers all refuse to reduce their prices, it’s time to take matters into my own hands again. I’ve heard a lot about Aquantuo, and it’s a Ghanaian company which should make things easier, so it’s time to give them a try.
As with Shoptomydoor, I will make regular updates until I have successfully received my items, or otherwise resolved things.
June 11th 2025
Made an account with Aquantuo, received my US address, bought a couple of things from Amazon which have been shipped. The process on the Aquantuo website is less clear than with Shoptomydoor – with the latter, they clearly stated that they would receive the items and consolidate them, but Aquantuo makes it sound like they will send each one separately? Their online chat doesn’t work, but maybe I can reach them on Instagram, so I’ve sent a message, waiting for a reply.
June 12th 2025
Spent about an hour entering information about the various packages into my Aquantuo dashboard. Had to include the price, tracking number and name for each of 12 packages, and initially I thought I had to create a separate Order for each one, but eventually it clicked that I had to create one order and keep clicking “Add Item” to add all the items to a single order, even if they are coming from different vendors (I didn’t have to do that with Shoptomydoor because everything was shipped from Amazon itself).
I blame my confusion with the process on Aquantuo’s website for not giving clear step-by-step directions on placing an order. There are guides about it on YouTube, but I shouldn’t have to rely on YouTube for that information. After, there’s no guarantee the videos are up to date or even accurate I’m not even sure I have done it correctly, but you let’s wait and see.
They’ve given an estimate for how much shipping will cost, but it is not final yet. There’s also a “Payment pending” button on the dashboard that makes it seem like I have to pay immediately, but there’s no place to actually pay. So confusing. -_- Still, until I pay Aquantuo, I’m not on the hook for anything. I trust Amazon, so I know they will refund my packages if the service doesn’t work. Next update will be when my packages start arriving.
June 17thÂ
The packages have started arriving at Aquantuo’s warehouse, and it seems my initial thought was right: unlike Shoptomydoor, they don’t consolidate packages and expect you to pay for shipping for each one individually. So I’m going to be paying $15 shipping on a $5 book, for example. There’s no reason to use Aquantuo over Amazon’s shipping in that case, except for high-ticket items you suspect might get stolen.
Cutesy message or no cutesy message, I don’t see myself using them again at this rate. I understand that they might want to save labor and time by simply forwarding packages as they receive them, but I’d prefer an option (paid, obviously) to repackage things and ultimately save money on the whole shipment.
Next update will be when all the packages arrive and I pay and begin tracking their route to Accra.