USPS Priority Flat-Rate vs UPS

[ecommerceprofit]

What is it now...UPS gives about a 10% discount for smaller merchants and 15% for larger merchants for UPS ground?

Why use UPS anymore when you can use USPS priority mail and pay less...

As an example, a 10 pound (residential) package going from New York to California via UPS costs $17.32 (not including the discount...with discount of 10% the cost is $15.59).

USPS large flat rate costs $13.95 (or $13.50 if postage purchased online and the box is free!) now add on .19 for electronic delivery confirm for a total of $13.69...

Now UPS ground can take 2 - 5 days (in rare cases 1 day in your immediate delivery area)...where USPS takes 2 days and sometimes 3.

UPS sucks if you can fit the item into the USPS flat rate box! The example above was for the largest USPS box...there are other options for medium and smaller packages which I'm sure everyone here is aware of. Of course, Fedex is similar to UPS in pricing/service.

[T_Miller]

As an example, a 10 pound (residential) package going from New York to California via UPS costs $17.32 (not including the discount...with discount of 10% the cost is $15.59).

We're not Amazon by no means, but our UPS contract rate for that would be under $12 (just checked). Anything over 1 pound is generally better for us with UPS.

We ship USPS Priority Mail a good bit too. (PO Boxes, AK/HI, APO, etc.)

But, like anything else, there's more to the equation than price alone.

Big factors for us:
Daily Pickup at 6PM
Air & Ground systems together
REAL door to door tracking
Definite date delivery
Money back if not delivered on correct day
Automatically insured up to $100
Ability to intercept, upgrade or reroute
Automated return service.
We're on the East Coast and can ship to 80% of the US in 3 days or less.

Sure I can find a handful of situations where USPS is cheaper (flat rate packaging, 1 lb boxes, AK/HI, etc) but services I listed are just as important to us. Plus 99% of the products we sell do NOT fit in Flat Rate packaging anyway.

[jwolthuis]

Agreed, you can't look at price alone. We switched from UPS to USPS last year. For us, the factors in USPS's favor were:

Much less breakage/damage (we ship glass products)
Cheaper brokerage fees for International shipping
Free Daily Pickup
Free boxes and tubes
Shipping to PO Boxes, and APO/AFO addresses
Saturday/Sunday/Holiday delivery for Express Mail

The breakage factor was huge for us. UPS has a much-higher level of automation, which seems to drop-kick boxes on a regular basis. Over half of damage claims were denied by UPS because parcels weren't double-boxed with 3-inches of UPS-approved padding on all sides. With USPS, breakage rates are down by 75%.

[rocknbil]

A few cents thrown in from direct experience . . . .

We re-visited the UPS system just the other day due to rising USPS rates. As we originally determined, overall, UPS is only viable *if* the packages are over a full pound - their minimum weight - and even then they are more expensive for a comparative USPS package.

And I have bad news for you:

REAL door to door tracking

You see the delivery men make the scans. So it all must be real time, right? However, I had an awful experience with UPS that proved otherwise. A package was ordered from eBay, from Texas to Oregon. This was being shipped during one of the largest wildfires in US history [archives.cnn.com].

The "tracking" showed the package as arriving in Denver, Salt Lake, and an unload scan in Portland, OR. But the seller called me and said the package was destroyed somewhere in Colorado.

How could it show a Portland unload scan when it never made it past Colorado? I called UPS. Their response?

That wasn't a physical scan, that was a logical scan.

HUH? Logical scan?

I have the tracking page saved for anyone wishing to verify this is not just a myth; the UPS "real scanning" is not based in reality. Never trusted them again.

[T_Miller]

Fully aware UPS scans are not really real time, but compared to USPS "Delivery Confirmation" (which is NOT tracking, it's just what the name says) it's 100x times better for our business.

We ship date-sensitive widgets. If they don't get there on time we lose a customer. In that situation, UPS (or even Fedex) out-performs USPS in tracking and definite date delivery. Huge deal in our industry. Priority Mail should be advertised as "2 or 3 days—Maybe";)

We ship pretty fragile widgets too, but our staff has mastered the safe packing we need to not worry about damage regardless of carrier.

We've always used USPS Priority Mail for AK/HI, APO and PoBoxes. It's about 5% of our shipping.

But we analyze our shipping every year and shop our business around.
We've been with Airborne Express, then DHL, then Fedex Air & Ground for several years, then UPS won our business a couple years ago.

As far as comparing price on packages with USPS vs UPS...That would really depends on your contract with UPS (or Fedex). Most small business fail to really negotiate their shipping contracts, but if you can document a years worth of shipping (box count, average size, weight, distance, service level, etc), they will get "down and dirty" with you on pricing. Then the perceived price advantage of USPS disappears...;)

I think we can all agree, there's no one right carrier. Each business must analyze it's needs and go with the carrier(s) that fill those needs.

[ecommerceprofit]

This information is great for me and I'm sure for future people like me - thanks!

[john_k]

I have always thought that it is best to offer a choice to the customer. Just like some of the comments on this thread, some customers have a very strong preference based on their own experiences. I have had customers say they don't want it if it has to ship via USPS. Others have said the same about UPS. Of course most orders take place without any conversation with the customer, and so you would never know how strongly those customers feel about the chosen shipping method.