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Crooked Dice Game Design Studio

US CUSTOMERS POSTAGE INCREASE - 01 JULY 2020

The USA has left the International Postal Union which sets the rate each postal service gets from another for completing the delivery of a international parcel.

The US now sets it's own rates and that has resulted in a significant rise in prices from 01 July 2020 - to the point where the US is now considered a new and separate postal zone - World Zone 3.

[snip]

borrowed from the crooked dice facebook page

I knew the Royal Mail's postage costs were going to be going up since the USA left the international postal union, but this is the first time I've seen the actual new prices posted and it look is to be about 30% or so higher for parcels (the USA used to be Zone 1)

so if any of you in the USA were planning to buy anything from a small UK retailer you need to try an get your order in before the change happens as pretty much everybody who used the royal mail will have to pass on the cost increase

Edit: Royal mail is the UKs national postal carrier and hands off to the USPS in the United States (I forgot not everybody in another country would know what carrier I was talking about), so if a courier isn't mentioned when it comes to the shipping section it's probably coming via Royal Mail

Will this be having a reverse impact too - ergo costs to buy and ship from the USA going up for those in the UK?

As if the new stupidly big customs declaration you now have to put on everything wasnt bad enough....

This is bad news for hobbyists over here in the USA.

 Overread wrote:
Will this be having a reverse impact too - ergo costs to buy and ship from the USA going up for those in the UK?

Hard to believe they can get higher.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Will this be having a reverse impact too - ergo costs to buy and ship from the USA going up for those in the UK?

Hard to believe they can get higher.

Oh they certainly can. There's a certain topic we cannot discuss right now that put a person in charge of the USPS specifically to run it into the ground.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
The US is still in the UPU. There has just been some renegotiation of the amount the USA would subsidize packages destined for the USA.

Royal Mail is indeed creating a World Zone 3. The prices for parcels to the US will be 5-25% higher than the same parcel to World Zone 1 on July 1 depending on the service and weight. The prices of their International Economy service is not changing.

https://www.royalmail.com/sites/royalmail.com/files/2020-05/royal-mail-our-prices-valid-from-1-july-2020.pdf

Just to correct the OP, based on the chart it looks to be 50% higher. Going from $10 to $15 is an increase of 5, 50% higher than the current/old price of $10.

I edited my post as well. The 5-25 was higher than zone 1, not higher than zone 1 today. Sorry about that.

Yikes, well that just sucks.

Guess it's time to buy American then.

*Looks around*

Uh, what DO we make in the US? Last US game company I remember seeing was Wargames Factory, which got split up and partially bought by Warlord...

 Stormonu wrote:
Yikes, well that just sucks.

Guess it's time to buy American then.

*Looks around*

Uh, what DO we make in the US? Last US game company I remember seeing was Wargames Factory, which got split up and partially bought by Warlord...

Warmahordes? Privateer casts their own resin, not sure about their plastics though.

Isn’t Wargames Atlantic locates in the Us? Or at least their Faun guy is?

Yeah they are. As is Reaper Miniatures.

And quite a few smaller historical companies.

But the UK has a huge number.

Eeek. My initial impulse is to buy whatever I can now, since just about every miniature company I buy from is in the UK (Footsore, Perry, Warlord). I wonder what the actual impact on prices for shipping from the UK to the US will be? We're already paying 25% of order usually. I wonder if this'll be a "we'll change prices of items" to cover the change, or up the cost of shipping to the US?

Have any miniature companies put out any info yet?

And they might just bump up the free shipping threshold, causing American consumers to save up longer for bigger purchases and perhaps lose interest.

 Overread wrote:
Will this be having a reverse impact too - ergo costs to buy and ship from the USA going up for those in the UK?

Speaking for the EU at least, those prices have consistently going up for the last... five years, maybe. Right now we're paying a LOT more on average than the amounts above.

Doesn’t help that Royal Mail was privatised a few years back either. That just added profit motive to prices U.K. side.

This may impact Looting, as we only send stuff recorded which isn’t cheap to start with.

May need to add new admins, perhaps those happy to act as a central hub for forward distribution in the US.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Doesn’t help that Royal Mail was privatised a few years back either. That just added profit motive to prices U.K. side.

This may impact Looting, as we only send stuff recorded which isn’t cheap to start with.

May need to add new admins, perhaps those happy to act as a central hub for forward distribution in the US.

wonder if UK based companies will start using Canada for their distribution, between this and corvid 19 it's got to be looking more and more attractive.

I’ve no idea! Loot wise have pitched to the admin seeing if a trusted Looter should be approached to join us, and act as a delivery agent for mass loots.

I mean, if it’s just the odd one or two, not much we can do about it. But when normality starts to reassert itself, I’ll be back to doing Store Opening and Anniversary Runs, and those can quickly involve a couple of dozen different US orders. So to have them go to one US address, then be punted on does stand to make a decent saving for those involved.

 Albertorius wrote:

Speaking for the EU at least, those prices have consistently going up for the last... five years, maybe. Right now we're paying a LOT more on average than the amounts above.

Yeah, I´ve stopped buying from the US lately. Some time ago it was fun buying stuff from US Ebayers that wasn´t available here in Europe, but now shipping costs are pretty ridiculous......

 Cruentus wrote:
Eeek. My initial impulse is to buy whatever I can now, since just about every miniature company I buy from is in the UK (Footsore, Perry, Warlord). I wonder what the actual impact on prices for shipping from the UK to the US will be? We're already paying 25% of order usually. I wonder if this'll be a "we'll change prices of items" to cover the change, or up the cost of shipping to the US?

Have any miniature companies put out any info yet?

I've seen several of the small companies (eg crooked dice and at least 3 others I can't remember at the moment) say they're going to have to raise shipping costs to cover this, nothing from any of the larger ones yet

This is too bad, but this is what supporting local industry looks like.

We collectively were always paying these costs, they have likely just become more transparent. I've been meaning to order some stuff from Hassle-free and some more stuff from LucidEye, but this might put a nail in those plans.

There are several stores in the US that sell LucidEye stuff. They tend to only be a few weeks behind in releases.

In other postal news, Auspost are planning on cutting 2000 postman jobs (about 1/4 of workforce) so packages that were currently waiting a month for will now take 2

Hopefully Games Workshop will change their policy of not allowing international shipping of their products as the shipping cost itself may be prohibitive without explicitly banning the practice.

This isn't going to really impact sellers outside the UK, they'll already either be using a distributor or have their own commercial logistics contract in place, which is probably not going to be with Royal Mail.

This is just going to hit the solo hobbyist who wants to buy something from a UK seller on eBay, or order from a UK based company that isn't large enough to have global distribution, and even then only really at the low end as RM are already expensive on larger international parcels, and likely wouldn't be first choice for shipping on those anyway.

GW is the last wargaming company this is going to affect.

Well.....guess I’ll just have to keep buying more Relicblade!

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I've seen several of the small companies (eg crooked dice, statuesque and at least 3 others I can't remember at the moment) say they're going to have to raise shipping costs to cover this, nothing from any of the larger ones yet

Just wanted to correct this to say that, as I'd posted on Facebook, Statuesque won't have to adjust P&P costs to the US as pretty much all my orders are posted as 'Large Letters' in 25mm thick boxes.

Sorry there Andrew, my mistake I'll edit the OP, shows my memory is not what it used to be