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As U.S. Postage Rates Continue to Rise, the USPS Gives the Chinese a 'Free Ride'

forbes.com

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Re: As U.S. Postage Rates Continue to Rise, the USPS Gives the Chinese a 'Free Ride'

#11

Post by AdamSC1 »

lwansbrough wrote: post #8
totalZero wrote: post #2

> As Amazon’s Vice President of Global Policy Paul Misener pointed out: > “The cost to ship a one-pound package from South Carolina to New York City would run nearly $6; from Beijing to NYC: $3.66.” > While sending that same one-pound package from New York City back to Beijing via USPS International Mail would cost in the ballpark of $50. Someone should really do something about this!

The problem is worse here in Canada. My friend does a significant amount of business with Chinese companies, and he says this is due to a UN treaty which classifies China as a developing country.

Example, I had a friend who was recently looking to start an wholesale business in Canada. Let's pretend for sake of the example that he was selling widgets.

He found he could import 300 widgets from China and have them landed in Toronto for a shipping fee of roughly $17. To ship that same set of widgets from Toronto to a store two cities away was going to cost him $349.

In fact for $17, he could send 1 widget within the same city he was in directly to a customer.

It gets even worse if he wants to send that package of widgets to the states for something like Amazon FBA. Once again, it would cost $17 to ship directly from China but would run him $1400 from Toronto to New York.

Re: As U.S. Postage Rates Continue to Rise, the USPS Gives the Chinese a 'Free Ride'

#12

Post by OliverJones »

Ordinary citizens can't affect this kind of policy. But US and European megacorporations can surely put pressure on governments to reform this rate imbalance, can't they?

Can't Amazon, Wal-Mart and Macys counter the influence of Alibaba on the US government? If not, what the heck. Time to emigrate.

There's a way to solve this problem.

How about adding an inspection at ports of entry for these packages? The inspections would verify sender addresses, consumer safety, and other compliance with receiving-country regulations.

It should be possible to get packages through the inspection process reasonably efficiently. If shippers had the expectation that these ePacket items would clear inspection in something like 120 days, that should work.

It would serve the needs of customers who really need the cheapest stuff, preserve safety regulation compliance, and give customers an incentive to buy from merchants closer to home.

This is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but not really.

Re: As U.S. Postage Rates Continue to Rise, the USPS Gives the Chinese a 'Free Ride'

#13

Post by geomark »

While the article is focused on shipping from China to the U.S. via e-packet, it seems China has similar agreements with other countries' postal systems. I live in Thailand and get free shipping from most Chinese merchants selling on Aliexpress. Some of those items can be purchased locally and shipping is not usually free. I've seen comments from people in Australia getting the same thing. Seems like merchants around the world are taking the same beating on shipping costs when competing with China.

Re: As U.S. Postage Rates Continue to Rise, the USPS Gives the Chinese a 'Free Ride'

#14

Post by sschueller »

This is also a huge problem for the Swiss postal service which has to sort all mail from China by hand. In the next few years the Swiss postal service will start to charge additional fees to the recipients of such packages to cover their losses.

I think a very large problem is that the packages are non standardised which prevents them from being sorted by machine easily.

Re: As U.S. Postage Rates Continue to Rise, the USPS Gives the Chinese a 'Free Ride'

#15

Post by the-dude »

Freak_NL wrote: post #3

This is well-known to anyone who ever looked into AliExpress and other Chinese online stores. Most of the stuff you can buy there has free shipping to pretty much everywhere. The reason why is known too (international postal agreements). What surprises me today is that nothing seems to have changed yet. Last year it was rumoured that the free ride would gradually end starting this year, but so far the Chinese retaile…

There have been changes : PostNL does not deliver these packages at the door anymore and you have to pick it up at a service location.

Re: As U.S. Postage Rates Continue to Rise, the USPS Gives the Chinese a 'Free Ride'

#16

Post by kogepathic »

icebraining wrote: post #9
timthelion wrote: post #7

The level of skew that "free trade" has created is pretty insane here in Europe. Shipping to Berlin is cheaper from China than it is from Prague. But that's not all. If I make an electronic device in Prague, and sell it to someone in Berlin, I am legally required to mark it with my address and a CE label. Regulators can then write to me and demand documentation on the devices safety, and if I don't comply within 8 da…

On the other hand, that's exactly why I only buy cheap crap from Chinese online stores, while I spend real money on EU stores, since they provide safety and warranties. I quite like the balance, personally. The shipping rates are certainly weird, and I do think they should be reviewed, although I think the internal rates are too high, but I admittedly don't know the cost structure.

> although I think the internal rates are too high

They would probably be cheaper if they weren't subsidizing postal rates for other countries.

I find it amusing when you have a problem on AliExpress and the seller suggests you mail it back to them. Unless the product has a very high value it almost always costs more than the product's value to send it back to China.

Luckily AliExpress customer service seems to realize this and will often grant refunds without requiring you to return the product.

eBay really sucks on this regard; it's very difficult to get a refund for a defective item without paying handsomely to ship it back.

Re: As U.S. Postage Rates Continue to Rise, the USPS Gives the Chinese a 'Free Ride'

#17

Post by donaltroddyn »

icebraining wrote: post #9
timthelion wrote: post #7

The level of skew that "free trade" has created is pretty insane here in Europe. Shipping to Berlin is cheaper from China than it is from Prague. But that's not all. If I make an electronic device in Prague, and sell it to someone in Berlin, I am legally required to mark it with my address and a CE label. Regulators can then write to me and demand documentation on the devices safety, and if I don't comply within 8 da…

On the other hand, that's exactly why I only buy cheap crap from Chinese online stores, while I spend real money on EU stores, since they provide safety and warranties. I quite like the balance, personally. The shipping rates are certainly weird, and I do think they should be reviewed, although I think the internal rates are too high, but I admittedly don't know the cost structure.

The problem is that you don't know who has plugged in a death trap transformer about to explode into flames in the apartment below yours, not to mention the numerous other ways that mains appliances can be unsafely wired.

Re: As U.S. Postage Rates Continue to Rise, the USPS Gives the Chinese a 'Free Ride'

#18

Post by jaclaz »

Freak_NL wrote: post #3

This is well-known to anyone who ever looked into AliExpress and other Chinese online stores. Most of the stuff you can buy there has free shipping to pretty much everywhere. The reason why is known too (international postal agreements). What surprises me today is that nothing seems to have changed yet. Last year it was rumoured that the free ride would gradually end starting this year, but so far the Chinese retaile…

>This is well-known to anyone who ever looked into AliExpress and other Chinese online stores. Most of the stuff you can buy there has free shipping to pretty much everywhere

And there is - just for the record - a perverse incentive to multiply packages.

Here in Italy there is an import duty exemption set at 22 Euros, so what often happens with free shipping via Postal Service (unlike what you would do on local (EU) online stores, where you try to get as much as you can from a same seller to minimize postage and handling) is that people order single items from different vendors, so that each single packet is lower than 22 Euros, and they have the bonus of being sure not to pay any import duty.

Re: As U.S. Postage Rates Continue to Rise, the USPS Gives the Chinese a 'Free Ride'

#20

Post by micah94 »

sschueller wrote: post #14

This is also a huge problem for the Swiss postal service which has to sort all mail from China by hand. In the next few years the Swiss postal service will start to charge additional fees to the recipients of such packages to cover their losses. I think a very large problem is that the packages are non standardised which prevents them from being sorted by machine easily.

This is ironically why the ePacket was created as mentioned in the article. They get their standardization, but continue to lose money. And our (US) rates continue to rise. Get rid of it and it reverts to U.N. mandated rates which are even cheaper.
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