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No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

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Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#421

Post by Scoundreller »

mistermann wrote: post #369
Scoundreller wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tota…

> Maybe If prices are raised as significantly as suggested, you think they'll only maybe make more revenue? If the sales completely stopped, or there was a mass exodus (eventually) to Amazon there may not be an increase, but this seems fairly unlikely in the short term. > 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…

Americans should pray that USPS doesn’t only worry about the short term.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#422

Post by craftyguy »

zizee wrote: post #393

Lots of speculating why it is cheaper to ship from China than domestically, a lot of it misguided. The root cause is that quite a few years ago the consortium of national postal providers which setup agreements on who pays for which parts of international shipping decided that China was classed as a developing country and given subsidized rates by other countries. This wasn't a big deal when the agreement was made be…

They did a really good job explaining the situation in that Planet Money episode.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#424

Post by reaperducer »

baybal2 wrote: post #403
reaperducer wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that "mistaking" is the right word. For years the United States has protested the cheap UPU rates that China gets. But the UPU still classifies it as a "developing" nation. China is the world's second-largest economy. It doesn't need or deserve the artificially cheap rates anymore. China shouldn't pay less to send packages overseas than countries in Africa. By leaving the UPU, the United States can set c…

> China is the world's second-largest economy. It doesn't need or deserve the artificially cheap rates anymore. China shouldn't pay less to send packages overseas than countries in Africa. China is a undeveloped nation. There are still parts of China where people live on under $40 a day. Developed nations have a moral obligation to help undeveloped nations

There are parts of America where people live on $40 a day.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#425

Post by Scoundreller »

arcticbull wrote: post #388
Scoundreller wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> My guess is that the company just hires dual citizens to avoid visa issues. This isn't related, the company can hire anyone they want to man the trucks. Do it often, and you register with FAST. > US lets you do personal imports up to US$800 per import without taxes/duties, so they limit it to that. That only applies to personal good, not things you're bringing for commercial purposes, and there's a minimum away-fro…

Well, that’s what the transport company requires. I’m guessing they’re brokering each package themselves, not as the entire lot at once.

I doubt US is letting them bring truckloads in if what I said about tariffs/taxes/duties is untrue.

https://support.chitchats.com/en/articles/1733099-what-items...

No minimum away-from-country time. That's for Canadians, not USians.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#426

Post by Scoundreller »

Taniwha wrote: post #406
nwallin wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still doesn't explain why it's so cheap. Planet money did a pod cast on it. Some guy selling some product could buy a Chinese knockoff of his product (including shipping) for cheaper than it costs him to ship his product from his local post office to his house in the same town. (excluding the cost of the product) Think about that. The product plus shipping across the world is cheaper than shipping across town. h…

I think it's because they are buying space that otherwise would be empty, and maintain an elastic buffer of packages to fill those spaces as they become available - the outgoing mail containers on planes are likely booked and paid for months in advance so the people paying for them will happily take 20% of their normal rate to fill the rest of them at the last minute

That, and air freight only costs around $5/kg at regular rates.

The low-rate consolidators are kinda shameful by only bringing goods to the closest port to the origin, not the destination.

E.g. in Canada, they only bring it to the Vancouver port, while wealthier countries will pre-sort and air it to the closest intl mail port (Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver).

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#427

Post by Scoundreller »

nickserv wrote: post #385
Taniwha wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it (and even though I live in NZ I manufacture in China and ship all over the world from there) much of the airmail shipping from China is essentially founded on arbitrage of the empty space in air-mail shipping containers from Asia to the West - it's while it takes a while and sometimes your package goes out of Hong Kong, sometimes Singapore etc In essence those packets are cheap because some smart p…

Don't know about air mail, but for maritime and rail transport, there is much more going from China to the EU or US than in the other direction by volume. This means cargo carriers have to send back empty containers to China. As a result, it's cheaper to book a container, from, say, Antwerp to Shanghai than the reverse. The difference can be quite substantial, potentially hundreds of USD per container. For the other…

That’s all especially true now that we can’t send our “recyclables” in those empty containers.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#428

Post by codebje »

varjag wrote: post #351
iagovar wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this also affect Europe? I remember that there was free or very inexpensive shipping from China to Spain.

Yes it does, although AFAIK noone in Europe is quitting the postal union yet. However here in Norway VAT is being introduced on all packages now, which is going to cut Aliexpress down quite a bit. Previously it was duty free below €35 combined value & postage.

I pay Australian GST on AliExpress imports, but it doesn't make local outfits more viable. I buy hobby electronic components primarily, local suppliers are often one to two orders of magnitude more expensive, not just a few percent more.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#429

Post by lstamour »

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?

Originally they didn’t collect much data and used manifests on the individual packages, but for the past 5-6 years they’ve a computer system to enter package info, it’s basically a Google Sheet, and they show the manifest like any other shipping company. They’ll occasionally get a thorough stop but it’s up to chance as anything when at a trusted, high-volume border crossing. If you’ve a Nexus card and nothing to declare, you don’t actually have to stop at the border between the US and Canada if Nexus lanes are open... and if you do have something to declare you can drop off a form. Also they probably stick to the same land border crossings and the same schedule to make it easier long-term. They can close many borders but there a lot of commerce and cross-border travel between Canada and the US and parts of Canada can be more populated/central than parts of the US and vice versa. Besides, as long as the carrier follows directions from CBP or CBSA, the responsibility of the shipment belongs with the shipper and you have to leave your complete ”from” details and they even check IDs, in order to ship with them. They send the list in advance so anything suspicious can be flagged or recorded, that’s how customs works in this digital era...

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#430

Post by tverbeure »

ikeboy wrote: post #392
tverbeure wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that not all of them have tracking. The ones with full tracking are AliExpress Standard Shipping and ePacket. Not that there's a noticeable difference in shipping cost: in some ePacket cases, the shipping cost was $0, even when the product itself was a $2.50 microcontroller board.

They may not be charging you for shipping but they're definitely paying for it. I'm not sure exactly what program AliExpress Standard Shipping is sent through. It seems like it's slower but it's hard to get information. How does the shipping label look?

> How does the shipping label look?

No clue. It's been a while.

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