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I know a lot of places that are increasing with the rates but personally i am just taking the hit for my business. Not sure how many more hikes though.i can take before i have to follow suit.

boyd wrote:
If you work for a company that let's their staff use their rates, by all means go for it. Pocket the difference, if someone is going to be mad they bought something they perceive as a good value from you but will get their panties in a wad because you're going to pocket an extra $10 on shipping because you have a better way to ship it than me and I would be paying that $10 elsewhere to ship it from anyone else then what does it master. Its still a good deal. Unless you are buying from international companies, these changes won't affect you much.

Or...if you ahve that option...why not just ship it with the ACTUAL price of shipping instead of being a douche and pocketing the extra money?

Karma will like you much better for it.

I do believe that the USPS did try to tell Congress that pre-funded pensions were killing them. Blame Congress.

This does suck though.

It's happening to postal services all over the world

A lot of the international shipping charges from the UKs Royal Mail went up a huge amount this summer

And in terms of using Fedex/UPs as a USPS alternative, that is not such a great idea for those importing into the UK (& I suspect EU),

as courier stuff ALWAYS get hit for import VAT of 20% or so, smaller USPS pachages often make it through without charge, so much so that I'll not order product (or back a KS) where they say they'll ship via courier

Hoard O' Bitz also sent a warning out about higher postal rates, so retailers are onto the hikes by the USPS regarding shipping.

 pretre wrote:

Mathieu Raymond wrote:USPS: following the GW business model since 2013!

boyd wrote:I'm surprised that nobody here on Dakka is going to say the USPS hired GW to consult on pricing strategies.

You mean except the first time the silly comparison was made?

For shame since this board tends to view any price increase to GW. You're ask missing the real point - someone needs to pay for these government employees to have a pension and healthcare. Its not fair that they worked for the government for 50 years and they don't get a pay check when they retire. You're just un-American if you think you should have to save for your own retirement!

Hoo boy. Take it to OT.

Pretre, I only meant it as a light-hearted joke. Geez.

 spaceelf wrote:
The post office states that international rates increased on average by 14.5 percent.

That's for letter class mail. Packages have increased anywhere from 50%-80% depending on the weight and service.

In the past it cost me about $4.60 to send a 3oz package to europe, now with the new rate that same package costs $8.88. A 5oz package is almost $12 to ship now where it had been about $6 previously. Shipping has almost doubled for small items that don't qualify for letter class and aren't really large or heavy enough to warrent shipping by priority mail. (which was already insanely exspensive before the price increase $25+)

The larger flat rate priority stuff has gone up on average 50% so the rate increase is steep but not as bad as with lighter packages. It's likely that they are trying tp push people to use international priority service more.

The post office model is profitable if all they had to do was take care of mail, however for years congress has been using the postal service funds to carry the weight of government pensions and medicare. They have to pay out nearly 3 billion each year into those programs which takes them into the red. Their service generates plenty of revenue, the problem is that the rest of the government is diverting that money and bleeding them dry. The post master general was very vocal and against any new increases, congress however basically told him to STFU and go away and forced the new rates so they can fund more stuff.

As always the people have to deal with increased costs to pay for the government being bloated and greedy.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
Pretre, I only meant it as a light-hearted joke. Geez.

That's why I didn't respond to yours. Geez.

Personally, a big advantage of regular mail over FedEx, DHL or UPS is that they deliver to my door or I can pick up my mail/package at a postal counter only a few kilometers away, conveniently located near a metro station and bus lines.

The bigger boys require me to rent a car to reach their depots. The only one that doesn't Purolator... doesn't seem to be used by anyone anymore. That costs me at least 30$ more to rent the car for a few hours.

Also for people using UPS they charge their own customs fee. They tend not to advise people of this when they mailing stuff out. I used UPS to send stuff to Canada and they wanted to charge the customer $50 to recieve the package. It was basically extortion and they refused to release the package unless he paid, nor would they return it to me. Big brown (UPS) has their own importer liscense so they can do customs internally without needing normal mail agents, they have to pay the governments extra for that service and that means in turn they charge the customers.

Their rates initially seemed to be on par with the US mail but when you added the import surcharges it was rediculous.

The fact that they don't tell people that there is surcharge was pretty deceptive. After that incident I used regular US mail from them out.

Oh yes, please, when you send my stuff to me (wink, wink), please do it by USPS. I don't care how much more they charge (over themselves).

 cgage00 wrote:
I shipped to Canada 2 weeks ago and to ship about 5lbs cost me $15.

What? How?

I just sent a 5lb 15oz box to Canada, and they charged me $36 for it! They even made a big deal about it being more than 4 lbs, and thus in some sort of new pricing tier. To be fair, the box was fairly bulky (Sedition Wars mailing box).

He has a deal through his work.

cincydooley wrote:You have this a bit off: they're too supported and subsidized by the government to fail.

They should fail for many reasons.

boyd wrote:They raised rates due to pension and healthcare costs. Their overhead is atrocious. All mail rates were effected we just have a law that says domestic rates can't go up more than a specified % each year. Hence the forever stamp because the prices for stamps kept increasing and nobody wanted to use the 1 cent stamp. UPS and FedEx do a better job and still make a healthy profit for nearly the same price and are more reliable.

The government doesn't subsidize the USPS. They haven't taken tax dollars in over 30 years.

Quite the opposite. Congress continually meddles with the USPS and tries to make them unprofitable, on purpose, due to heavy lobbying by UPS, who wants to see mail service privatized. Part of the reason that UPS is profitable is because they don't have to deliver first class letter to every single American, no matter where they may be, in the country, for less then 50 cents. If they did, you'd see mailing letters costing $15.

Of course, the more obvious problrm is Congress mandated that they have to pay 75 years worth of pension costs within a 10 year window, something no other company in the world has to - or could - do. And, the awesome idea to end Saturday approval, which you think the USPS is just too pig-headed to take? They're dying to and have been lobbying it for years. Congress mandates saturday delivery and would need to pass legislation to remove it.

Also, UPS and Fedex both have the bulk of their mail carried by USPS's network, such as their aircraft. So be careful what you wish for. UPS carries about 15 million packages a day. I'm sure they'd have no problem shifting to 23 million per hour, which is what the USPS does, right?

Just to note, the rates for flats (envelopes) are approximately one third the price of the rates for boxes. So if you are just shipping a few bits or a figure or two, you may be able to get away with using a padded envelope.

As a Canadian who orders a lot of stuff from the states, this news really sucked for me. I do feel bad for the USPS, though. Ouze had a great post upthread describing their predicament. It's sad to see how many people are uninformed about the actual state of things, and opt to use the USPS as a scapegoat for expressing their political beliefs.

Vetric wrote:
With the increase in shipping, plus that it seems like Canada Customs is being a lot more picky about duties, and it looks like I'll work on getting my backlog of minis built and painted instead of buying for awhile.

It may not help you now with the new postage rates dissuading international purchases, but most miniature wargaming products would have been exempt from duties if you had ensured that the shippers were labeling the customs documents correctly. The proper designation for minis is something like "Miniature "scale" models" and they are not subject to tariffs.

Altruizine wrote:
As a Canadian who orders a lot of stuff from the states, this news really sucked for me. I do feel bad for the USPS, though. Ouze had a great post upthread describing their predicament. It's sad to see how many people are uninformed about the actual state of things, and opt to use the USPS as a scapegoat for expressing their political beliefs.

Vetric wrote:
With the increase in shipping, plus that it seems like Canada Customs is being a lot more picky about duties, and it looks like I'll work on getting my backlog of minis built and painted instead of buying for awhile.

It may not help you now with the new postage rates dissuading international purchases, but most miniature wargaming products would have been exempt from duties if you had ensured that the shippers were labeling the customs documents correctly. The proper designation for minis is something like "Miniature "scale" models" and they are not subject to tariffs.

They can still charge you for GST/HST/PST and the $9.50 "service charge" for anything over 20 bucks if they randomly select your parcel though. But there isn't anything a mini company can do about that other than lying on the customs form (price and or gift status) and that ain't a smart thing.

And really, as annoying as the sales taxes are, they did balance the (federal) budget in the 1990s and help cut income tax rates. Big picture / policy-wise they are a good thing.


And yeah, UPS is horrible for international shipping - they overcharge for their 'customs brokerage fees' and hold your package hostage, usually in a suburb you have to drive to.

 Cyporiean wrote:

 cgage00 wrote:
See I talking about rates that bigger accounts have access to not the general population. I should have been clearer on that point. Lets use this example:

I go to my local store to ship a box from me in York sc to chino ca. The store will charge me $30. They factor in all their costs and what not.

Now I use my companies fed ex account. I only have to pay $7.52 after all discounts and taxes and fuel charges.

See the difference?

FedEx just quoted me $35.41 for a 5lbs package to Canada.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Made a business account, ran through Fedex's online quote with the same variables.. it gave me a price of $95.16 for lbs to Canada.

I think he means established accounts with negotiated rates. For example, at my work, we get almost an 80% discount off published air rates through UPS (3-day, 2-day, overnight, and all variations) and a 50% discount on ground, because of our volume (about $10,000 per week, more during our busy seasons). With our negotiated rates, sometimes it is actually cheaper to ship 2-day from the east to west coast than to send ground!

 Ouze wrote:

cincydooley wrote:You have this a bit off: they're too supported and subsidized by the government to fail.

They should fail for many reasons.

boyd wrote:They raised rates due to pension and healthcare costs. Their overhead is atrocious. All mail rates were effected we just have a law that says domestic rates can't go up more than a specified % each year. Hence the forever stamp because the prices for stamps kept increasing and nobody wanted to use the 1 cent stamp. UPS and FedEx do a better job and still make a healthy profit for nearly the same price and are more reliable.

The government doesn't subsidize the USPS. They haven't taken tax dollars in over 30 years.

Quite the opposite. Congress continually meddles with the USPS and tries to make them unprofitable, on purpose, due to heavy lobbying by UPS, who wants to see mail service privatized. Part of the reason that UPS is profitable is because they don't have to deliver first class letter to every single American, no matter where they may be, in the country, for less then 50 cents. If they did, you'd see mailing letters costing $15.

Of course, the more obvious problrm is Congress mandated that they have to pay 75 years worth of pension costs within a 10 year window, something no other company in the world has to - or could - do. And, the awesome idea to end Saturday approval, which you think the USPS is just too pig-headed to take? They're dying to and have been lobbying it for years. Congress mandates saturday delivery and would need to pass legislation to remove it.

Also, UPS and Fedex both have the bulk of their mail carried by USPS's network, such as their aircraft. So be careful what you wish for. UPS carries about 15 million packages a day. I'm sure they'd have no problem shifting to 23 million per hour, which is what the USPS does, right?

This. This. This.

USPS is also having to do a bunch of other budget-fixing stuff where they can. In my area they just eliminated the job category for the delivery people, who were (I believe) making ~$22 as a base rate, and they now have to apply for their own jobs again, making ~$16 as a base rate. Which is not a terrible wage, but is a pretty massive paycut for all the ground-level guys going out in the snow and rain.

Back on topic, yeah, folks need to be aware of this for their international trades and purchases, and should now definitely comparison-shop FexEd and UPS (and possibly DHL?), (although that customs thing with UPS sounds scary, so it'd probably need to be a lot cheaper for me to try them) who used to almost always be more expensive than USPS. It is sad, as I always found USPS very reliable (moreso than FedEx or UPS) and cost effective.

Hmm, looks like I won't be buying anything from the US anytime soon.

The prices were already murder, what with the exchange rate, UK customs often charging 30% of the value of the package in import duty, plus a small handling fee on top.

Nearly doubling the already expensive shipping is pretty much going to kill the US export economy stone dead.

I blame the Australian government. Enough lobbying has seen the US raise its prices to levels that negate any discount Aussies have from buying overseas.


Of course I don't actually think that, but if the prices are as bad as this, then any sort of online discount us Aussies would get (and this isn't a GW-related thing) just dried up.

The irony... still cheaper to buy from the US and UK
BUT!!! Now I might in fact get a large battlefoam case as luggage and pay the $50 excess baggage fee!!

Soon it will be cheaper to fly over and bring it back as luggage... this isn't actually a joke, I am doing that at the moment with clothes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Now that I think about it... SO HAPPY ABOUT MY KS PURCHASES!!! Everything just got a lot more expensive.

paulson games wrote:Also for people using UPS they charge their own customs fee. They tend not to advise people of this when they mailing stuff out. I used UPS to send stuff to Canada and they wanted to charge the customer $50 to recieve the package. It was basically extortion and they refused to release the package unless he paid, nor would they return it to me. Big brown (UPS) has their own importer liscense so they can do customs internally without needing normal mail agents, they have to pay the governments extra for that service and that means in turn they charge the customers.

Their rates initially seemed to be on par with the US mail but when you added the import surcharges it was rediculous.

The fact that they don't tell people that there is surcharge was pretty deceptive. After that incident I used regular US mail from them out.

FedEx does this as well. I'm fairly certain that it's not an internal customs fee; it's actually a brokerage fee: FedEx or UPS or whoever will simply pay the customs duty fees on the receiver's behalf, and then charge a brokerage fee for the service of having paid it on your behalf. Then the company will refuse to release the package until they are reimbursed for the cost of the duty as well as their charge for their brokerage service.

One of the most important things to do is to request a copy of the customs receipt that proves a duty fee was actually charged and paid for on your behalf (and the federal gov't will *always* issue a receipt for duties paid).

I remember TNT sent me numerous invoices for that brokerage service which they were never able to prove they actually performed. Came pretty close to going to court over their $25 fee, but they backed off and left me alone when I sent them notice of my intention to sue in small claims court for attempted fraud and $25k in aggravated mental distress. TNT even went as far as to send me a fake letter from an attorney's office in NY, whom had no knowledge of their firm's name being used in such a fashion upon being contacted by me. That also didn't work out well for TNT.

TL;DR TNT sucks, and FedEx & UPS employ some of the same abusive practices, but it's possible to get around them.



Hey, look! 3000

You're 100% correct about it being a brokerage fee, but I don't follow from your post how it's possible to get around it.

Unless you're suggesting that you allow them to retain possession of your items while you organize a legal case against them.

Altruizine wrote:
You're 100% correct about it being a brokerage fee, but I don't follow from your post how it's possible to get around it.

Unless you're suggesting that you allow them to retain possession of your items while you organize a legal case against them.

If they have no proof that they paid the customs fee, they can't expect you to pay them back for it plus any associated fees.

SilverMK2 wrote:

Altruizine wrote:
You're 100% correct about it being a brokerage fee, but I don't follow from your post how it's possible to get around it.

Unless you're suggesting that you allow them to retain possession of your items while you organize a legal case against them.

If they have no proof that they paid the customs fee, they can't expect you to pay them back for it plus any associated fees.

Maybe I wasn't clear, but this is pretty much it.

Ouze is correct - except that the money that USPS has paid into "their" pension fund (to make them the only part of government that is BY LAW required to fully fund their own funds) is probably being fudged and spent (some of it is supposedly going into the pension insurance thing to help bail out companies and states, because Congress already spent the money that was supposed to be in there...)

Also, I blame the Australians. If they would not have started buying so much GW from stores in US to get around the embargo, then we would not have this problem....

 azazel the cat wrote:

SilverMK2 wrote:

Altruizine wrote:
You're 100% correct about it being a brokerage fee, but I don't follow from your post how it's possible to get around it.

Unless you're suggesting that you allow them to retain possession of your items while you organize a legal case against them.

If they have no proof that they paid the customs fee, they can't expect you to pay them back for it plus any associated fees.

Maybe I wasn't clear, but this is pretty much it.

Yeah, but the delivery guy still won't hand over your item after a verbal request for the receipt, right? I've tried that a couple of times and the UPS dude was just like, "sorry, I have no idea about the customs charges, but I can't let you have the package until you pay the fee".

 cincydooley wrote:

boyd wrote:
If you work for a company that let's their staff use their rates, by all means go for it. Pocket the difference, if someone is going to be mad they bought something they perceive as a good value from you but will get their panties in a wad because you're going to pocket an extra $10 on shipping because you have a better way to ship it than me and I would be paying that $10 elsewhere to ship it from anyone else then what does it master. Its still a good deal. Unless you are buying from international companies, these changes won't affect you much.

Or...if you ahve that option...why not just ship it with the ACTUAL price of shipping instead of being a douche and pocketing the extra money?

Karma will like you much better for it.

Makes no difference to me, I don't buy or sell stuff online so I have no skin in the game. I just don't see how you would get bent out of shape for $5 on something you're obviously spending a couple hundred on in the first place.

 Tethyr13 wrote:
Ouze is correct - except that the money that USPS has paid into "their" pension fund (to make them the only part of government that is BY LAW required to fully fund their own funds) is probably being fudged and spent (some of it is supposedly going into the pension insurance thing to help bail out companies and states, because Congress already spent the money that was supposed to be in there...)

Also, I blame the Australians. If they would not have started buying so much GW from stores in US to get around the embargo, then we would not have this problem....

Oh no!! They're on to us
*runs away screaming*