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No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

sellercentral.amazon.com

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Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#261

Post by the-dude »

awinder wrote: post #256
jrockway wrote: post #126

The impression I get from that thread is that the dream here is now Americans can do what they do best, sit in the middle of transactions and collect rent. Previously, you could go to a Chinese website and have the Chinese factory send you a widget directly to your door. Now that will be too expensive, but hey we have a solution! An American will order a bunch of widgets in bulk, ship them over in a cargo ship, come…

FTA: "This is all related to the Universal Postal Union agreement that allows Chinese sellers to ship products to the U.S. for less than it costs us to ship to the same state." The USPS has been losing money on this arrangement for a long time, it's one of these things that has stuck around despite being a total embarrassment due to industry pressuring. There is no reason taxpayers should be subsidizing this -- in fa…

This is not limited to the US. I believe it is worldwide and it is certainly the same in The Netherlands.

edit: I believe there has been some change recently, the 'ePacket' ? Which is not delivered to your door, but you have to fetch it at a postal point.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#262

Post by quaquaqua1 »

olyjohn wrote: post #252
lighthazard wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where should I be buying my automotive car parts?

From the OEM as much as possible. I know their parts are "expensive" but nobody debates that they have the best fitment and quality compared to places like AutoZone, O'Rly, etc. The only other option is to look for the company who builds the OEM parts and find their suppliers. For example, you'll find Exedy builds clutches for companies like Honda. So if you can get an Exedy clutch from your local parts store, it's u…

>from the OEM as much as possible

I think I'll take my chances with the "Mexican" parts you've described as I have seen them installed in countless cars and road deaths have only been dropping year over year.

There is no need for me to crucify myself financially because German plastic is supposedly better than Mexican.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#263

Post by heymijo »

blairanderson wrote: post #209

This genuinely won't change anything on Amazon because top sellers are already using FBA. This is bad news for Ebay/Wish/some-shopify-dropshippers.

I thought/wondered the same regarding wish.com. Although this 2019 Forbes article makes it sound like it's not a death knell.

> Shipping is cheap thanks in part to an agreement between China Post and the U.S. Postal Service that allows goods that weigh 4.4 pounds or less to be shipped at low rates. About 15% of Wish’s shipments qualify.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2019/03/13/meet-the-...

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#264

Post by Scoundreller »

mistermann wrote: post #229
Scoundreller wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’ll be good for the USPS (or maybe not if people just order off Amazon and they deliver), but the benefits to US jobs will be oversold.

I haven't really heard jobs being a part of this discussion at all, the reasoning and the rhetoric has been about leveling an clearly unfair playing field. The USPS will certainly make more revenue, and in turn they should be able to pass that on by reducing shipping costs for people shipping from within the US. For companies drop-shipping from China , regardless of whether the person running the business is in the U…

> The USPS will certainly make more revenue

Maybe. The main benefactor may be Amazon people switch to them. They have the lowest domestic shipping costs (presumably, since they’ve implemented their own in-house couriers).

The actual cost of USPS of delivering a package is kinda complicated. If USPS is going by your house every day, how much do their costs go down if they have 1 less package to drop off?

Dividing total costs by packages delivered doesn’t tell that story.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#265

Post by Accujack »

entropea wrote: post #40
jermaustin1 wrote: post #30

So is drop shipping from China now dead? A major benefit of drop shipping from China was the pretty much $1 shipping for almost any item via ePacket. Obviously the products are still cheaper, but with a 25% tariff on most goods, and what I can only assume will be a close to DHL price for shipping, a t-shirt drop shipped from China will probably cost more than one made and shipped domestically. To continue to be compe…

>So is drop shipping from China now dead? Probably. This is going to drop a lot of sellers off of Amazon and eBay, and likely have major effects on independent small business dollar/99c stores.

Also businesses like Harbor Freight will benefit, because it will be much harder/more expensive to buy direct. Same thing with the "cheap" brands at places like Menards.

This will slow the pace of innovation in a lot of areas, especially among electronics hobbyists. Cheap chinese circuit boards from Shenzen are a major driver for electronics related businesses, robotics, drones, and lots of other areas.

This is going to hurt a lot of people in the US, and put more money in the hands of big business like most other initiatives coming out of the government lately.

All this isn't talking about the elephant in the room, which is the fact that this agreement is changing because our delusional President doesn't like non whites.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#266

Post by Excel_Wizard »

minikites wrote: post #236
delfinom wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. I absolutely fucking hate Amazon now. It's full of white label products. You can tell the seller does no real safety testing of any kind from their broad array of random shit. You can't even trust the kitchen equipment for chance they made the steel with lead or the silicone is mixed with something toxic, etc. Completely unregulated market place of stupid. And this is on top of Amazon's counterfeit probl…

>I'm surprised nobody has died yet from counterfeit or substandard automotive goods of all things. I've been told this will self-regulate in a truly free market.

I 100% guarantee someone has died from substandard automotive goods. Not sure when or where, but mechanical failures contribute to accidents all the time.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#267

Post by Ensorceled »

jrockway wrote: post #240
burnte wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I absolutely fucking hate Amazon now. It's full of white label products. So is Walmart and Dollar General. It's always been the customer's responsibility to buy the product they want, not the store's. Don't want counterfeit crap? Don't buy IFONE FROM APPEL in the listings. I don't know when the last time I got counterfeit crap from amazon is because I look at what I buy before I buy it.

White labelling and counterfeiting are two different things. White labelling is just rebranding; I go to Home Depot and buy some screws, print out a label that says "jrockway's miracle fasteners", slap it on top of Home Depot's label, and sell them to you, that's white labeling. Counterfeiting is when you inject seemingly-identical goods into the supply chain. You mix up some soap and blue dye in your bathtub, pour i…

> Amazon thinks they're selling you genuine merchandise.

I'm pretty sure Amazon doesn't believe this anymore either.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#268

Post by Scoundreller »

dev_dull wrote: post #249
kevstev wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most will agree that is a "fair" competitive advantage. What myself and I think most find problematic is that the USPS is actually subsidizing Chinese packages inbound to the US, to the point where its somehow cheaper to send from China than domestically. That may have made sense at some point when China was still in its embryonic phase of development, but they are well past the point where this is necessary…

The fact it went on this long is the confusing part to me. Why didn't anybody come and say "Hey! This is weird. Let's stop this" before 2016?

A certain someone has a real hate-on for China?

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#269

Post by ukoki »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #177
jrockway wrote: post #126

The impression I get from that thread is that the dream here is now Americans can do what they do best, sit in the middle of transactions and collect rent. Previously, you could go to a Chinese website and have the Chinese factory send you a widget directly to your door. Now that will be too expensive, but hey we have a solution! An American will order a bunch of widgets in bulk, ship them over in a cargo ship, come…

> sit in the middle of transactions and collect rent This is already a cottage industry, drop shipping. You make a shopify store, put up some marketing of people in sunglasses in front of brick walls, and sell cheap crap like fashion watches. Then when someone buys one, you go on Aliexpress and order it directly to your customers' address. If you're a real expert in arbitrage, you don't settle for making a couple dol…

> If you're a real expert in arbitrage, you don't settle for making a couple dollars at a time.

Have you been to Thailand? I estimate these "digital nomad" drop-shippers and drop-shipping-shippers comprise about half the GDP of Chiang Mai

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#270

Post by shameshame »

tracer4201 wrote: post #163
magduf wrote: post #5

This actually sounds like a good thing. It costs Chinese shippers almost nothing to send stuff directly from China, while it costs me quite a lot to send stuff within the US, largely because I'm subsidizing all the Chinese shippers. Moreover, for me to send any parcel (even very small ones, like 2 oz.) outside the US costs a small fortune these days, again because I'm subsidizing the Chinese shippers.

I don’t have the background on this - help me understand why or how it’s cheaper for goods to ship cheaper from China than shipping within the US? The US taxpayer is subsidizing this? I’m shocked and confused.

Planet Money did a great breakdown on this. Essentially it comes down to international agreements on the cost of doing the past mile of shipping for other countries.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...

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