May 12, 2008
If you ship USPS, your costs are going up for pretty much all USPS shipping services – Express Mail, Priority Mail, Parcel Select, Parcel Return Services, First Class Mail, Standard, Package Services.
While it seems simple enough, it is far from simple to judge the impact if you’re shipping on your own. For example, Express Mail is going to be zone-based: the further away, the more it will cost. First Class Mail will switch to shape-based pricing and there will be more tiers.
If you read the Postal Service pages, they are spinning these cost increases, and the fact that there will be an increase every May from now on, as a great new small business feature. Don’t be confused, it is more money out of your pocket and there are lots of changes that will likely impact costs to your business. There is some argument to be made that these new prices were adopted to give USPS more flexibility before 2009, when a new postage pricing law takes effect and USPS will be able to raise rates annually, but no more than the inflation rate the year prior.
Businesses from catalog retailers to wedding planners (invitations for Spring & Summer weddings, anyone?) are concerned about the rate increase. Catalog retailers are particularly impacted by the USPS rate increases. For a great write-up on the impact of Lillian Vernon, check out the Freightdawg write up.
Some benefits of using Shipwire and our growing warehouse network are:
- Shipping from multiple warehouses really lowers rates, especially when you factor in those new USPS zone pricing changes for Express Mail.
- Shipwire is untangling the USPS changes to ensure your USPS packages go out at the least expensive rates possible.
- Our rate lookup tools are up-to-date.
- Our shipping volume is constantly going up so we’re passing along great rates to the businesses that work with us.
We’ll continue to keep you up to date.