Shipping costs- WTF


I just need to vent. A couple days ago I tried to ship some Target speaker stands from Oregon to Ohio. I bought them from a guy in NJ and he paid $60 to ship them FedEx ground. Using the exact same box and packing materials I went to FedEx and they said to ship them to OH would be $170. So I went to UPS: $169. I went to the USPS: $180. Granted it's a large box (30" x 17" x 17") but weight was about 15 pounds and it's easy to handle. So yesterday I took the stands to the UPS store to get an estimate on them boxing them separately. $33 x 2 for the boxes and $104 x 2 for shipping. So $274. For $200 speaker stands. Obviously I'll only be able to sell them locally....

maprik

Covid was a great excuse for companies to raise their prices across the board.

I agree, costs are never coming back down.  The genie is out of the bottle on this one....

My favorite solution to all of this has been to use a bulk rate shipping service called Rollo. I discovered it about a year ago, and it has saved me / buyers of my used gear hundreds. It’s a startup that negotiated a bulk rate with USPS and UPS and they make money by keeping a small fraction, and passing the bulk of the savings onto consumers. No monthly fee or anything. I regularly save 20-40% off the retail rate, and it is a bonus that the user interface is miles better than the UPS and USPS.

My first education with shipping was similar.  I found the pricing for boxes and bubble wrap ludicrous.  One of the attractions of the shipper I chose was a local drop off.  Turns out only the main shipping offices were the only place one could print the QR sourced shipping label.  Into traffic hell.  At least I could print the code myself and drop the boxes without a line at that point.  

Got my own boxes bubble wrap and tape though and saved most of my sale.  I would have lost a good third of my money just to shipping.