Trying to offer competitive shipping charges - shipping from NY

client stands in line half-hour to ship $6.95 product.

[johannamck]

A client of mine runs an e-commerce store in NY. She currently charges $7 in shipping and handling for a $6.95 product. IMO, this kills a lot of potential sales.

She says she has to stand in line at the post office for so long, she's reluctant to lower the price.

I would love to hear from merchants in large cities, how they handled their shipping when they just started out. She does not have many sales yet. The product is small and light, like a pocket book or a leather glove.

I thought that using stamps.com encodes the destination info in the postage, so it's almost as good as a delivery confirmation (?) Would that be a way to go?

Would a lot of fraud to be expected, if an item is shipped by regular mail without delivery confirmation?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Jenstar]

You can get delivery confirmation and insurance with stamps.com, it is all done online when you print the stamps.

[francesca]

Stamps.com offers delivery confirmation. That save us a lot of time because we do not need to go to the post office to drop off the packages. We just give them to the postman.

As a consumer, it turns me off to pay more for shipping than the actual price of the product.

[Rossv1]

The US Post office web site will let you pay for and print postage/mailing labels (with bar codes) and gives you options for delivery confirmation/tracking,etc....she could just print out the postage at home then drop off the package or have her mail carrier pick it up...

[choster]

Why not just get a postal meter?

[chuladi]

You can get delivery confirmation on first class parcels (not flat envelopes) for an additonal 0.13. I would advise her using either endicia, stamps.com, shippertools.com or a postage meter. There is no reason for her to stand in line.

[johannamck]

Thanks for your answers. I suspected that there was a way to do it from home.

I'll have her check if the postman can stop by her office for pick-up. She said only the smallest of packages fit into the drop-off mailboxes. Maybe it's different in New York because of security reasons? I never had trouble squeezing even larger packages into mailbox around here (Florida).

I'll forward her the thread so she can witness the power of WebmasterWorld firsthand! :)

[Compworld]

I've been using stamps.com for years. I ship about 15 - 20 packages per day, and I just leave them with either the postmaster or place it alng side with the clerk, then leave. I only stand in live for international shipments. Alternatively, you can have USPS, UPS, FEDEX, Airborne/DHL pick up your packages at your location for an additional 5.00, I think. You can do that, and just have the carrier pick the packages up once or twice per week in bulk. Other things to consider, change the way you package products. Instead of using boxes use mailers, tubs, thick plastic shipping bags, etc. Become creative. After all, the bottom line is what counts the most.

Hope that helps.

CompWorld

[martyt]

We use USPS First-class and Priority mail almost exclusively, and print postage with stamps.com. We ship 5 to 20 packages per day. All packages have electronic delivery confirmation as part of the service.

One of the best investments we've made was a thermal label printer (of the type used with UPS software. Zebra is the brand name), plus one of the 10-lb electronic scales that integrates with stamps.com software. Those two items make it a breeze to process outbound packages with very little effort. If you have a UPS shipper account, you can get thermal labels for free from UPS. They probably don't like you to use them for non-UPS shipments, but oh well...

Unfortunately, the scale isn't available from stamps.com anymore; check on eBay and you'll find them for $30 or less. The label printers are available on eBay for about $40 or so as well.

As an added bonus, boxes for USPS Priority Mail shipping are FREE from the USPS - you can order them online and they get delivered a few days later.

When it comes time to drop off packages, we run to the post office, find an empty space on the counter and leave them. After arriving daily for the last year, they know who we are.

Our mailman stopped by the other day to say that the USPS was going to start offering free pickup of priority mail packages so he could take them with him when he comes. Don't know when that's going to start, but it'll make things even easier.

[tolachi]

Even if shipping is reduced to let's say $3.50, it would still bother me to pay 50% of the cost of the item in shipping. Unless this is an item that the customer can do comparison shopping on I would suggest making the shipping free. We have "free" shipping and customers consistently site it as something they like about us. So sell me the handbag for $10 instead of $7 and make me feel good about getting a deal on shipping.

I've read in a few threads that in many cases raising prices doesn't affect sales and can even increase sales to a point. I've found that to be true in my experience.

And we use stamps.com for our small items too.

[mquarles]

If you have a UPS shipper account, you can get thermal labels for free from UPS. They probably don't like you to use them for non-UPS shipments, but oh well...

They are now putting UPS text on the bottom 1/4" or so of the labels, so you might also need a paper cutter ;-).

MQ (not that I would ever do such a thing)

[derekwong28]

We ship from Hong Kong and the US is our largest source of customers. We use normal non-registered air mail for most orders below $37.00.

Despite the higher risk of being lost for shipments sent from overseas, and also the risk of the customer making a fradulent claim of non-delivery. Our records show this is well less than 1%. The risk of a lost order being sent within the US must be well below that.

The saving in cost of registration of the package outweighs the cost of resending lost orders by a large margin. I would say that most of the other online merchants we know in Hong Kong use normal non-trackable air mail for inexpensive items. You would be pleasantly surprised at how honest customers are when you use a delivery method that cannot be confirmed.

[Sunshyn]

The comments in this thread spurred us to give Stamps.com a try. I'd heard about them for years but didn't think we could purchase insurance without standing in line at the PO after everything anyway. We ended out spending quite a bit of time bugging their phone support with a big list of questions today. They went out of their way to be helpful and were very informative.

According to the welcome message, we'll get a starter kit soon which includes a "Free Scale Voucher", so unless that's something different, they're currently offering it for new Power Plan accounts.

Thanks guys. I pick up so many useful tidbits in this forum! :-)

Oh. One question I'd forgotten. I'd like to offer a link to delivery confirmation/express tracking on my site's status page so that the customer doesn't have to paste the number in themselves. Does anyone know if Stamps.com has anything I can use to do that?

[martyt]

In reverse order:

You can link to delivery confirmation info with a url like so:

http://www.stamps.com/shipstatus/submit/?confirmation=123456789

The scale they give you is a mostly worthless 5 lb. electronic scale without any kind of serial interface - so you still have to type in the weight yourself.

If you want to buy a scale that interfaces with stamps.com software, search on ebay - there are several available. There's one made by a company called Salter Brecknell, model 7010SB, that will also work with the stamps.com software. You might be able to find that elsewhere on the internet.

As for insurance, I think it's a waste of money. So far, over the course of about 1500 packages in the last year sent by USPS, only 2 have been lost. It's a lot cheaper in the long run to self-insure and just suffer the cost of replacing a lost package than to pay for insurance you'll almost never need.