A Question about Shipping . . .
Greetings!
Recently, I’ve encountered several issues concerning the shipment of our products.
We make every effort to ship our orders out within 48 hours of receiving them. We bring all packages directly to the post office rather than dropping them in a drop box or handing them off to our mail carrier because that’s one less ‘step’ that the package goes through to arrive to the customer. I believe that the fewer steps means the fastest service from point A to point B.
We’ve been using Parcel Select Lightweight (aka General Delivery) for most of our packages because this is – in most cases – the most economical of choices for US delivery. When we first started out with 52Teas, I was of the belief that above all, people wanted to save money on shipping costs because I’m from that same school of thought. I don’t mind waiting a little longer if that means that I will save a couple of bucks on shipping.
But does everyone feel that way?
Would you rather pay only $2.50 flat fee for shipping and wait a little longer for your package? (While keeping in mind that General Delivery also means “general” customer service from the post office as well, while first class shipment usually means better customer service/attention from the post office.)
Or would you rather me increase the price slightly (I’ll still keep the prices affordable, I’m thinking around $3.50 for shipping) and ship the packages via First Class?
I don’t know that my current program will allow me to offer the option for shipping choices, but I think it does. I will have to look in to that. The biggest problem with the shipping option in my current ecommerce system is that it is set to weigh things at 1 pound increments and the tea pouches I sell weigh between 1/2 ounce and 2 ounces – so the system isn’t able to calculate properly the weight so I can’t get an ‘actual shipping cost’ until I weigh a package myself.
What are your thoughts?
My preference by far is to keep shipping costs as low as possible. I don’t mind waiting a few more days for my tea. The suspense sometimes adds to the enjoyment.
The only time I would potentially pay for express shipping is around the holidays. I tend to do my gift shopping last minute, and sometimes I need an option to have a faster delivery time.
Speaking as a Canadian who has to deal with shitty dollar conversions and already higher shipping costs – cheaper is almost always better.
If you want to offer shipping for less, I wouldn’t mind waiting a few more days.
Hello Everyone:
Thank you very much for offering your thoughts on this issue. Contrary to what the resounding opinion on this subject has been here, I am going to be switching it up to First Class. It is a matter of (in most cases) a dollar or less for First Class versus the lightweight parcel select but what I have noticed in just this short time utilizing lightweight parcel select is that it’s absolutely frustrating when it comes to my efforts to offer the best customer service I can offer.
I currently have a couple of packages that were sent out over two weeks ago and according to the tracking, it appears that those packages are still in the main branch of the post office here in Washington and I believe that these packages would have had better treatment if they had the first class postage on them. The difference in postage here would have been less than 50 cents and while that 50 cents adds up after you’ve shipped the number of packages that I ship out, it’s not worth the headache that accompanies that savings.
So I thank you for your input, but I think I do need to make some changes!
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