Forum

Shipping cost!
 

Hi everyone
I'm a seller on ebay for 9 months and I think I am doing my business better and better.

Most of buyers are from European, I really want to offer them a lower shipping cost, so I can sell more items.


Fedex and UPS are so expensive, I can only choose Canada Post , but I have to say CanadaPost is not cheap and international air parcels come without tracking number.

Is there any other companies that we can choose

every week, I may need to ship 60 items to the rest of world( European and North American)

Need help

many thanks!
Sue

Probably won't help you much but a major part of my sales are to Australia. I have all my best selling lines shipped in bulk to a contact (well a son of a friend) in Auz. I list with Australian Ebay accounts on .AU and my contact packs and mails items as the orders come in. I cover all costs and pay a % of the profits per item sold.

It works well for me as the profit margin and level of sales is much higher than I get when selling the same items on my UK accounts.

I had given up on the Australian side of my business due to the shipping issues (cost, time in transit, tracking issues etc. etc.) until I came up with this new business model.

CaptainJack

How to save shipping costs
 

Imho, if you are dealing with the O/S market you should not risk sending items unless you have full cover. Items should be sent with delivery confirmation & as much cover as you can manage.:ranger:
Read what the buyer did to this user.:pout:
http://www.aspkin.com/forums/paypal-...preciated.html

There are too too many reports of scams from international sellers. Consider your options VERY carefully. What's the point of saving a couple of bucks on shipping for an item to go missing? In the long run, being cheap does not work :tears:

Once you start to have an increase in the volume of items being sent, you should be able to get a discount. I use FEDEX with reasonable success

I use fedex but what I hate is that I get charged $2.50 cents for residential deliveries and $2 extra for rural deliveries.

Ups
 

I have been a volume seller for many years on eBay and due to the volume of goods I sell, UPS (Canada) give me a 67% discount within Canada and 55% to the US. This actually works out cheaper than Canada Post, with a fully automated shipping systems. No typing or writing out labels. Who the hell wants to go to the post office with 100 items to ship every day.

Liimey

OMG, you luck goose. I love UPS but cost waaay to much for me. I use canadapost expedited mail but the service is never the same as UPS. ERRR...

Ups
 

Yes Burning, I agree their service is very good. They deliver to all major centres within Canada with next day delivery, but only have to pay the standard rate, less my discount of course. Parcels get to New York etc.. within 2 days. So my ebay 5 star ratings have never been an issue and the spped of deivery help with the feedback for sure.
To get the rates i did, I just negotiated hard with UPS. It is fairly simple really. Its started like this:
I used to be with CanPar, who within Canada are honestly very good. Their rates are the best I have seen especially as they are willing to give ebayers ( i.e volume shippers) a good discount. To be honest they are no where near as professional as UPS fedex, but in this case it is to our advantage. As you can just " guesstimate" your volume, obviualy on th high side, and they will easily give you 50% of their stardard rates, which works out to be roughly the same actual cost I get from UPS. The only disadvantage with Canpar is that although they do have and webbased shipping system which can print thermal labels, you have to type or copy and paste the names and address into the system. With UPS their shipping system automatically connects to my checkout and prints the label once payment has been confirmed. It actually saves me at least paying for 1 whole member of staff.
Anyway, so becuase of my volume, typically UPS and Fedex came calling one day. I simply explained the discount and volume I was getting from Canpar ( and trust me the UPS reps already know how aggressive Canpar are within the industry) and to match or better the deall they came up with the discounts i know enjoy.
Liimey

Yes, canpar website is not as good compared to UPS. Also you can print labels directly on paypal using UPS. The standard rate for UPS is too much. I use Fedex, and there rates are more than 30% cheaper than UPS without any discounts. I don't have enough volume in order to get a discount. But, I stopped using Fedex, I got fed up with the $2.50 residential delivery fee and the $5 rural delivery fee. But, one thing I like about Fedex and UPS is that they only factor in the weight for shipping cost. Canadapost factor in the size of the package mainly. I used to have boxes that I used to ship my items in pretty big boxes, when sending by Fedex. The only reason I used bigger boxes was because I got a really good deal on ebay. The only reason I used bigger boxes because I got a good deal on them, I paid $4 for 25 boxes, which is less than .16 cents per box. But, now I have to minimize the size of my boxes in order to get a cheaper price from canadapost.

To bad. I get USPS boxes for free and use there cheapest shipping and turn the boxes inside out and ship. I have a stamp that says "delivery Confirmation Verified" on the top near the label. Most times the sneaky customers think twice.....maybe.

Hmm..I could do that since I have a fedex account but shipping supplies don't cost that much!

Burning is correct,fedex is too much expensive and also the service is not so good sometimes when you need to some help for clear custom or some other issue.

Fedex nickle and dime you on every shipment but I must say that there service is very fast and there customer support is pretty good. They've always helped me when I needed help on a shipment but when is comes down to price, I'd stick with Canadapost.