General > General Technical Chat
Would you really sell on ebay ?
GlennSprigg:
If buying from Australia, to Australia, I often find the same eBay seller/person elsewhere on the Internet, and transfer a 'cheaper'
cost to his bank account, after some dialog. Then we BOTH save!! 8)
peter-h:
"The cost of shipping out of the USA went up dramatically around 10 years ago. I used to send quite a bit of stuff and as long as it wasn't huge or super heavy there were economical ways of doing it. Now all of the low cost surface options are gone and USPS only offers the high priced premium airmail services. Shipping even a small package to the UK for example will cost over $50 now,"
I find that really surprising.
What about normal airmail / air parcel post?
I've been importing from the US for 40+ years and the biggest issue I have seen is that most US firms are not interested in using the "Post Office" because somebody has to mess about, go there, etc. Whereas if they use say Fedex they just chuck everything on a big pile, have a streamlined system for labelling it / printing off the AWBs, and the Fedex driver just collects the lot, so nobody has to do anything "complicated". The result: I pay $150 for shipping the smallest item, whereas airmail would have cost $15.
SilverSolder:
--- Quote from: Simon on October 13, 2020, 06:12:38 am ---[...] It's also a quirk of an agreement between countries to no charge each other. [...]
--- End quote ---
The agreement between governments relates to the distribution of "the last mile" (can be many miles!) after the container full of mail is dumped on the floor in some distribution center, once it has arrived in the destination country.
The agreements between countries are based on the real costs of distributing the mail. (We are talking about professional negotiators here, not members of the public!) The real costs boil down to a warehouse, and some guys with some vans - they all know that, and that is what they are willing to pay for. Those costs are not that high, and have nothing whatsoever to do with the prices we pay at the post office counter.
Western business and private users of the mail services are, to put it in simple terms, being fleeced. Then, when we notice how cheap it is for Chinese businesses to send stuff, we think they must be cheating... - and it is convenient for the powers that be for people to blame China rather than them, so they are happy to let people believe it is all China's fault - they are far away anyway, and probably blame us for a lot of their own problems in return, on the same principle! :D
SilverSolder:
--- Quote from: peter-h on October 13, 2020, 02:49:01 pm ---"The cost of shipping out of the USA went up dramatically around 10 years ago. I used to send quite a bit of stuff and as long as it wasn't huge or super heavy there were economical ways of doing it. Now all of the low cost surface options are gone and USPS only offers the high priced premium airmail services. Shipping even a small package to the UK for example will cost over $50 now,"
I find that really surprising.
What about normal airmail / air parcel post?
I've been importing from the US for 40+ years and the biggest issue I have seen is that most US firms are not interested in using the "Post Office" because somebody has to mess about, go there, etc. Whereas if they use say Fedex they just chuck everything on a big pile, have a streamlined system for labelling it / printing off the AWBs, and the Fedex driver just collects the lot, so nobody has to do anything "complicated". The result: I pay $150 for shipping the smallest item, whereas airmail would have cost $15.
--- End quote ---
The US postal rates are pretty complicated. E.g. https://www.nerdylorrin.net/jerry/postages/index.html
On one level I don't blame the average small business person for not wanting to grapple with this... on another level, they are obviously giving up sales, since it is the customer that pays the shipping, not them...
It is hard to send "real world" packages to the UK for less than $20. The exception would be "flats" i.e. paper documents - nothing else is allowed to be sent at the document rate.
Competing services that simply bung everything into a container like the USPS and Royal Mail should be doing have already appeared...
Simon:
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on October 13, 2020, 03:03:13 pm ---
--- Quote from: Simon on October 13, 2020, 06:12:38 am ---[...] It's also a quirk of an agreement between countries to no charge each other. [...]
--- End quote ---
The agreement between governments relates to the distribution of "the last mile" (can be many miles!) after the container full of mail is dumped on the floor in some distribution center, once it has arrived in the destination country.
The agreements between countries are based on the real costs of distributing the mail. (We are talking about professional negotiators here, not members of the public!) The real costs boil down to a warehouse, and some guys with some vans - they all know that, and that is what they are willing to pay for. Those costs are not that high, and have nothing whatsoever to do with the prices we pay at the post office counter.
Western business and private users of the mail services are, to put it in simple terms, being fleeced. Then, when we notice how cheap it is for Chinese businesses to send stuff, we think they must be cheating... - and it is convenient for the powers that be for people to blame China rather than them, so they are happy to let people believe it is all China's fault - they are far away anyway, and probably blame us for a lot of their own problems in return, on the same principle! :D
--- End quote ---
actually royal mail ran at a loss until the volume of online selling picked up and it started turning a profit because the cost to process a parcel is not too different from a letter but for it's size, weight, fuel etc. As soon as Royal mail started making money they privatized it. I don't think parcels have gone up dramatically just letters. Now parcels and letters are delivered by different people who may even cross each others paths but the volume of parcels is such that it warrants a person with a van where in the past the on foot post person would carry the odd parcel. Now the ones carrying letters do leaflet drops too.
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