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No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

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Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#371

Post by rtkwe »

Scoundreller wrote: post #234
ineedasername wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"using international shipping as a profit centre" Canada is truly awful in this respect. In Canada, it might cost around $50 to send a small package to another country (excluding the US, which is a little cheaper). In the US, the same package might cost a little over $10. I'm in the US and I occasionally have to ship small light packages to Canada and was always frustrated when it cost me $10, 3x as much to ship a fe…

There’s a cottage industry of companies in big cities that will truck your US-bound package to the US for $1 each and deposit it into USPS. Eg: chitchats express. Sometimes Canadians do this for shipments to Canada because it can be a lot cheaper.

How does that deal with customs and inspections?

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#372

Post by tim333 »

romaaeterna wrote: post #331
adventured wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a UN-based forced rate subsidy for developing nations that China still benefits from. "According to the U.S. Postal Service, it costs around $20 to mail a small parcel weighing 4.4 pounds from one U.S. state to another, yet mailing the same package from China only costs about $5." "The Universal Postal Union, a United Nations agency that sets postal rates among its 192-member countries, dictates USPS's artificia…

Parent is correct, despite being grayed currently by downvoting. UPU is an international postal treaty organization that was subsumed into the UN. Every country used to have conclude treaties with every other country (read Anthony Trollope's autobiography for a fine account of his negotiation of one such treaty between the the US and Britain). China has gamed the system on this rule, so the US is forced to threaten w…

The rules were probably set when China was a poor country like Fiji. They seem to have overtaken only in 2009. In 1980 GDP (nominal) per capita of Fiji was 6x China, now China is about 60% ahead. They've come up fast. (data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_...)

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#373

Post by epx »

In Brazil, the local mail charges R$ 15 (~US$ 4) to deliver international packages from "certain countries" i.e. China. The result is, ultra-cheap freight has almost disappeared, most sites like AliExpress now charge around US$ 4, but the class of this kind of package is not charged again here, so it is still kind of cheap.

OTOH mail from USA is damn expensive. I don't buy more things from USA because of this. And local customs tend to target USA packages more so the chance of paying import tax is way higher, too. Even packages from Europe and Japan are cheaper, and one can see they are more distant places.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#374

Post by hinkley »

lonelappde wrote: post #232
trhway wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>despite shipping from China being obviously more expensive in real world resources. 3 weeks container shipping on a super container ship vs. even cheapest truck shipping ?

The Chinese shippment also has to use a truck to get from Port.

Do you remember that article a couple years ago about pollution at the Port in LA? They've done a bunch to reduce ship emissions in dock but the truckers are popping up on the radar.

The short-haul truckers at the Port in LA are all independent owner-operators, which sounds like a cool libertarian/capitalist ideal until you figure out that new trucks are super expensive so the operators are almost exclusively buying used trucks, often quite old (and grandfathered into emissions rules). And as we all know from personal experience, there's a lot of soot that comes from a heavy diesel when it accelerates from a dead stop.

And there are no large necks to wring so now you're in the awkward situation of having to go after little guys.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#375

Post by euph0ria »

holoduke wrote: post #241

I ordered more than 1000 parcels from AliExpress, banggoods, gearbest and hobbyking. Never ever I had to pay import duty costs (Netherlands) and in most cases shipment was either free or a redicilous low amount. If everyone would be like me, no store would exist anymore here in Holland. Even though I am a bit of a hypocrite, I do think it's fair to make the market a bit more fair.

Just curious, what type of stuff do you buy? I find that the quality often is poor when buying from Aliexpress with artificial ratings boosted by the seller doing anything to get a high review. Banggood has been better with more accurate ratings.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#376

Post by outworlder »

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.

Why would dollar stores be affected? Are they not buying stuff in bulk and shipping themselves?

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#377

Post by Scoundreller »

rtkwe wrote: post #371
Scoundreller wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a cottage industry of companies in big cities that will truck your US-bound package to the US for $1 each and deposit it into USPS. Eg: chitchats express. Sometimes Canadians do this for shipments to Canada because it can be a lot cheaper.

How does that deal with customs and inspections?

Show the manifest, they go through it. Dunno how much they inspect.

My guess is that the company just hires dual citizens to avoid visa issues.

US lets you do personal imports up to US$800 per import without taxes/duties, so they limit it to that.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#378

Post by eropple »

aurizon wrote: post #366
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.

The postal service has beenbadly run for decades, with excess deliveries - once a day. Make delivery once a week and chageextra for daily delivery. As e-mail sucked away letters the USPS staff all stayed employed with fat wages as well as fat pensions. Now those excess people and unfunded pensions have sucked USPS dry and allowed UPS and Fedex etc to craft specialized services to dan lots of $$ from the system. Deliv…

This aggressively selects against the elderly, the poor, and rural and even many parts of suburban living.

I am not, as a rule, particularly fond of rural or suburban living due to free-rider problems, but as long as we choose to subsidize those lifestyles, a prompt and rigorous postal service is necessary. And as long as we have poor (and old) people kept out of the technological race, it is incumbent upon us to not stick a thumb in their eye.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#379

Post by seemack »

ryanackley wrote: post #346
jonathanmoore wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this as a positive for Shopify. We work very closely with the platform, and over the years I have only seen a handful of direct-from-Chinese dropshipping sites that actually produce any revenue. Sure there are a lot of accounts that are opening with the hopes of a get-rich-quick scheme with low cost and risk. I am certain that it is the legitimate businesses that are behind Shopify's success, and this will help…

Check out Shopify's marketplace for selling online businesses [0]. I limited the search to dropshipping. Dozen's of businesses with five figure monthly revenue and a few with more than that. Revenue data comes directly from Shopify and can't be edited by the seller. These are just the businesses for sale. I would call this more than a handful. Look, Shopify is a great product and long-term I only see it growing. That…

Not sure what's changed but that link shows me only one business with 5-figure monthly revenues.
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