Suggestions for services that you have used would be appreciated.
The big forwarding service would be Tenso: https://www.tenso.com/en
Proxy services include
Buyee - https://buyee.jp/ (though they don't like VPN access)
Noppin - https://noppin.com/
Japan Rabbit - https://japanrabbit.com/
amongst many others.
If you're looking for recs, I'd recommend trawling some of the subreddits for figurine collectors or garage kit hobbyists since they're both groups that employ proxy services quite a bit. Any type of otaku group really, lol. They'll almost certainly have some stories to share about good/bad companies.