Shipping cost

[abunaitoo]

Living in the middle of an ocean, shipping cost is unbelievable.
Dropped off a return to the UPS store. Noticed it was UPS ground.
Asked the counter person if it was correct.
She said it was. Cheapest way to send UPS is ground. Even from Hawaii.
I checked the web site and made a dummy just to see what the cost would be.
#40 package from Hawaii to Missouri.
2nd day AM.........$149.10
2nd day PM.........$121.52
Ground................$107.02
Not all that much saving between the three.
Way more than USPS flat rate.

[AKbushman49]

albunaitoo- I feel the pain, living in the last frontier is much the same. Some companies won't do USPS either. Call them on the phone requesting USPS, and they say sorry that's their policy, FEDEX/UPS is it. Yikes $$$ especially when shipping is usually more than (2x the Item(s) cost. I tell them UPS/FEDEX couldn't find me if they tried. So ya just lost a sale. bushman

[dragon813gt]

Shipping costs in general are high. I have to ship parts or have parts shipped to me all the time. They're always shipped UPS Red which is next day early morning delivery. A package that would normally cost $10 ground will be close to $100. The dummy costs you posted don't seem that bad to me. Especially for the distance. I will pay the same thing when shipping cross country.

I've noticed you've complained about shipping costs in the past. You live in Hawaii where everything has to be flown in. And you aren't close to anything. Call it a paradise tax if you will. Don't like paying high shipping fees, then move. I realize no one is going to do this. But when you live on an island in the middle of the Pacific I'd expect everything to cost more money.

As far as not using USPS. This is a business decision and I can't blame them. USPS does not provide real time tracking. And their claims process if a government black hole. UPS/FedEx/DHL are far from perfect. But you know where the packages are at all times. And there is a claims process to get you money back if the package is lost in transit. You won't find companies that ship valuable merchandise using FRBs. I know people want businesses to use them. But I don't get mad at those that won't. I always choose UPS shipping even though it's more money. I've had to many issues w/ the USPS.

[waksupi]

Shipping costs in general are high. I have to ship parts or have parts shipped to me all the time. They're always shipped UPS Red which is next day early morning delivery. A package that would normally cost $10 ground will be close to $100. The dummy costs you posted don't seem that bad to me. Especially for the distance. I will pay the same thing when shipping cross country.

I've noticed you've complained about shipping costs in the past. You live in Hawaii where everything has to be flown in. And you aren't close to anything. Call it a paradise tax if you will. Don't like paying high shipping fees, then move. I realize no one is going to do this. But when you live on an island in the middle of the Pacific I'd expect everything to cost more money.

As far as not using USPS. This is a business decision and I can't blame them. USPS does not provide real time tracking. And their claims process if a government black hole. UPS/FedEx/DHL are far from perfect. But you know where the packages are at all times. And there is a claims process to get you money back if the package is lost in transit. You won't find companies that ship valuable merchandise using FRBs. I know people want businesses to use them. But I don't get mad at those that won't. I always choose UPS shipping even though it's more money. I've had to many issues w/ the USPS.

USPS DOES track. Here is the info from a package I sent yesterday;

Expected Delivery by

THURSDAY
14
DECEMBER
2017
by
8:00pm
Status

In-Transit
December 11, 2017 at 6:52 pm
ARRIVED AT USPS REGIONAL ORIGIN FACILITY
MISSOULA MT DISTRIBUTION CENTER

[dragon813gt]

Their tracking is spotty at best. So are their delivery times. Any business, not a casual shipper, knows this fact. There are many times when a package is still showing as on the way when it was delivered days ago. The USPS tracking system isn't anywhere close to UPS or FedEx. When out for final delivery they know what truck it's on and can and will go get it from that driver if need be. Good luck getting the USPS to do this. The other two aren't perfect. But you can see the package progress at every step and barring weather delays it arrives when it's supposed to.

[hanleyfan]

the commercial shipper gets price breaks but the private shipper get taken to the cleaners price wise. this why I don't ship much anymore. they all raised their rates and added surcharges when fuel price went up back a few years but now since fuel prices have dropped their rates have not.

[David2011]

I bought an RC airplane kit from an individual a couple of years ago. It was insured and had tracking. It just disappeared for a while. I envisioned it with fork lift tracks across the box. Fortunately it showed movement again after about a week of sitting at a USPS hub and ultimately arrived undamaged.

[salpal48]

There is a Reason why business ship UPS or Fedex . I was in the printing Business all my Life. When a Deadline is made It is written in stone. To us the USPS was bad business and unreliability

[MaryB]

Fedex is a joke where I live, boxes get dumped randomly all over town. The city office has a box drop off so you can go find your stuff after it says delivered!

[Down South]

For the comments about USPS tracking. I have items shipped almost weekly by USPS and they do pretty darn well on tracking.

[GhostHawk]

When you live in Paradise, there are some hidden costs.

Being that far from the rest of the United States, shipping is I suspect a very real cost for you.

Now you could probably live for 1/3 of what it costs you over there here in North Dakota.
And shipping is not bad. But you ain't living in paradise no more.

Be happy with what you have.

Think of me the next time it is 78 degrees there, and we are freezing in the minus 20's and 30's from Frostbite Falls down to the Iowa border. I can see your paying through the nose for shipping but I don't feel that sorry for you.

[RogerDat]

Let me see UPS is the second largest package delivery service and they do the volume in a year that the largest, the USPS does in a month. So one offers essentially concierge service, first thing in the morning & next day as the normal use case. The other competes on volume with their FRB's but if you want to pay the money they will do next day air also. We don't, most people don't however the USPS can do it and does offer it. We all want the cheap shipping cost so that is what we use USPS for. When we want to pay long green for special handling we do that at other services.

Hawaii and Alaska benefit from the USPS being required to deliver door to door for the same price anywhere in the US, they don't get to do the zone pricing that UPS and FedEx use. Interestingly I often now see UPS trucks delivering to the post office to do "last mile" delivery. Post office is going there anyway so UPS pays them a fee to finish the delivery.

If shipping costs are high I shop around, at least one place I do business with in Minn. their website uses FedEx and shipping runs $25 and up, I call and they stick it in a padded USPS envelope and shipping is $7.20 it annoys the parts guy a little bit, but he also gets a grin out of how the website was going to save so much of his time. As if people will willingly pay $25 to ship a couple of $7 hinges.

I have had only two items go the "long way" shipped by USPS. One broke open and got side tracked to get taped up so the ingots that had punched holes in the box would stay inside. Which prompted my starting packaging secrets of success thread so folks would not let ingots be free floating in boxes. The other time there was a delay because the zip code part of the label was damaged and it was delayed until that was looked up and added back on. Considering the number of boxes I have had coming or going that seems like a decent record, not to mention a huge difference in the shipping expense if that had all gone UPS or FedEx.

[dragon813gt]

Fedex is a joke where I live, boxes get dumped randomly all over town. The city office has a box drop off so you can go find your stuff after it says delivered!

I have nothing good to say about them myself. I live on a "North" street. They routinely deliver my packages to the "South" street. Last time was a $5,000 set of wheels for one of my VWs. The child of the homeowner received them and was attempting to keep them. Needless to say I wasn't happy and his father set him straight. But I shouldn't have to go to another house to pick up a package that's mine. There was also the time they left a high value firearm on my front porch, didn't knock and didn't get a signature. That one led to the delivery driver being fired.

Regardless of the carrier there's going to be good and bad points. While UPS may be fine for me someone else may have major issues receiving packages. Everyone wants something for nothing these days. Shipping costs are definitely one area where people don't want to pay.

[Handloader109]

A couple of points, first, FedEx uses contractors, not employees for delivering and most interstate transit, this causes issues in a lot of areas. Usps does track fairly decently now and are getting better. Cost is high, heck it is ridiculous to pay what it costs, but what can you do? Pay and Fergie it

[mtnman31]

I use USPS flat rate when it fits and is the cheapest. Their tracking isn't perfect, but it is getting better. It has been probably 15 years since I lost a package. For bigger packages I use UPS. My family has a business and does a ton (literally) of shipping with UPS. The business gets a significant discount on rates, generally around 20%. This discounted rate is negotiated with UPS. When they want your business, they'll cut you deal. That said, they aren't going to give much discount to a casual shipper.

My beef isn't with the USPS or other shippers. My beef is with people selling something and charging ridiculous shipping amounts. I saw a rifle on Gunbroker today that the seller had $160 bucks to ship! I hope it sits there for a while. If you want to make money on shipping, then lower the price of the item. When I have purchased items from people online that wanted too much to ship, I ask if they are willing to let me email them the shipping label. I got some ammo from a guy that wanted 25 to ship. My cost to ship was 14 and I just emailed him the UPS label and ORM-D labels for the outside of the box.

My most recent, memorable USPS moment was a few years back. I ordered a bunch of stuff from Midway and it's tracking showed delivered but I hadn't received it. Two days later, I'm going for a walk in the neighborhood and notice a USPS box sitting at the base of the curbside mailbox of a house I know is not occupied. It was my box. Not only did the postman deliver to the wrong house, he was too lazy to drop it off at the door and instead left it on the curb. I talked to him about it and never had an issue again.

[aap2]

Shipping costs to Hawaii are unreal; back in 1970 I had a repro flintlock pistol shipped to my Hawaii address and the shipping was something like $45 for a $40 pistol. Had to go by “express” since it was a pistol; $45 was big bucks for a kid in high school. Black powder was not available on the island and shipping was impossible. No problem, a Navy guy gave me a coffe can full of the black powder that they used in the 16 inch naval guns and I made a lot of smoke at the shooting range inside Diamond Head crater for several years. Living in paradise has it’s costs but they are often worth it.

[Ole Joe Clarke]

Now about the US Postal Service. Last Friday down in Dixie we had a little snow storm, the 1" plus of snow became 12" plus is some locations. We tend to get excited here sometimes just because the word snow is mentioned in the forecast. The snow made travel hazardous at best, so there was no mail on Friday or Saturday, I forget which. I was expecting a package Saturday and it was a no show because of the weather.
On Sunday, when I went to pick up a disabled guy to bring him to church I noticed a mail carrier delivering mail, then another one on the way home from church. We had a birthday gathering at a local eatery afterwards and when we came home I noticed the mailbox door open a little. Sure enough, the package and other mail was delivered on Sunday!
The USPS gets a lot of bad press, (deservedly so in a lot of cases) but this time they came through like a champ.

Have a blessed day,

Leon

[pill bug]

Well Abunaito, It does not look as if Dragon and Ghosthawk have much sympathy about the high cost of shipping to the islands. To be fair, they do have a point when it comes to the weather. I passed through Kaneohe on Saturday to see for myself if the 7 brothers restaurant in Laie really does have the best burger on the island (they do, without a doubt). Anyway, The weather was absolutely beautiful, sunny with a light trade wind breeze. As perfect as I have ever seen it. However in GhostHawks Dakotas, its cold this time of year. From what I understand the only thing between North Dakota and the sub-zero winds of the arctic circle, is a 3 strand barbed wire fence on the Canadian border. Not sure about Dragon in SE Pennsylvania, so checked his weather on the computer, its in the 20's today.

So, Oahu is as they say, pretty much paradise. If I was to find fault, it would be the traffic. a little slow in Kaneohe and sometimes absolutely gridlocked in Honolulu. Also, the huge homeless camp at kakaako recently got removed. So I guess the now displaced homeless folks are on the warpath. Kakaako park got trashed and is now closed, work is in progress to do a half million dollars in repairs. 2 schools in Honolulu had fires while I was here. One only had an outbuilding burned, but the other lost a whole row of classrooms. Estimated 2 million dollars damage. Then there was the fire under a freeway overpass that burned up the main telecommunication lines. knocked out the cell phones on Oahu and Maui for a few days.(my phone worked, so I guess not everyone was affected). On that one, the homeless folks actually painted on the overpass that the fire was retaliation for getting kicked out. Now they are camped along the Nimitz highway in mass and lesser amounts in most of the parks.

Well, started out with one complaint and I guess its actually 2, the traffic and homeless. Have another, the amount of stripped, burned out late model cars on the island. never saw that before. even a burned out tour bus right in downtown (see picture). Last time I was here they only broke out your window to take your stuff. now its the whole car. Don't understand what that's all about.

Kind of drifted, was supposed to talk about shipping rates. But that was pretty much covered before I got here. Thought it might be more fun to talk about the underbelly of Hawaiian life. Don't get me wrong , love the place, truly paradise. But after seeing Waikiki and the expensive shops in the giant Ala Moana mall and the hoards of Japanese tourist its nice to venture a little further and check out real life Honolulu. Its a crazy place of unimaginable wealth and crushing poverty all in tight proximity, completely multicultural, all doing whatever they do with only one unspoken rule- don't bother the tourist! That's the sure fire way to get the seemingly non existent coppers instantly energized and in your face!

[Bulldogger]

Ground is allowed to take longer, so they charge less for it and in my experience it still moves relatively quickly.

If you ship more than randomly, it may be worth getting a business account with FedEx or UPS and seeing if they give lower rates. Also, if you're shipping as a result of an eBay or Gunbroker sale or some other "service selling" website, they allow you to generate shipping labels through the site and they pass along their business discount to you. I shipped a 30lb large box using Gunbroker yesterday and VA to IL it was less than if I'd driven to FedEx Kinkos and paid as a private citizen.


I second the USPS flat rate path too. I use it anytime I can. There are different sizes of boxes and enveloped in each rate too, don't forget. The medium "suit" flat rate box is the one I use most, and then the flat rate legal envelope that ships for the same price as the standard small flat rate box.

Bulldogger

[tomme boy]

So explain how I can get an item shipped from Finland to Iowa for $10 and signature is required. This is on a box that is 2x the size of a Large flat rate box.