It's been a little over a year since dimensional weight took effect on parcels under 3 cubic feet. Our shipping costs almost doubled at the time, and we switched to a greater number of box sizes; but we are still shipping lightweight parcels, but this time with little air space, and have got the increase down to about 50% increase, which is still crazy. Most of our boxes are about a half cubic foot, and we are being charged for 5 to 12 pounds, for 2-3 pound shipments, based on the published cubing factor of 139 for International and 166 for domestic shipments.
When I order personal stuff from Amazon, I see they are still shipping packages full of air. They are either incredibly stupid, or they must be exempt from cubing. I did negotiate with the shipper for a cubing factor of 999 (basically you can ship feathers with no surcharge), for three months, to allow us to get rid of our existing stock of now unsuitable boxes, so I know they can do it.
What gets me upset, is that the small merchants, who are changing their habits, are getting nailed to the wall for shipping increases, while a large merchant like Amazon are not changing their practices, and probably is costing FedEx big time by shipping packages with mostly air, without paying for it.
We are looking for a minimum density weight of 210 or 220 to to bring the shipping costs down to, what would be consider a normal annual increase in shipping rates. Not having much luck, and now I may need to switch shippers, or play one against the other.
Anybody had much luck in getting a permanent change to Dimensional Weight Calculations, to return to the good old days, for packages under 3 cubic feet ?
