Mail Charges in USA

There are manufacturing and supply interruptions worldwide causing price fluctuations...I've run into this several times and have ended up going to different supplier and buying in bulk....might not be practical in all cases or fruitful, but has worked for me....

Terms such as "ridiculous postal charges" and "gross profiteering" are terms that sometimes are used to describe our postal system. More than once I have purchased something that was "free returns but you pay return postage" and then thrown the item away because the return postage cost more than the item.

Our system is typically not described as "efficient' or "fast paced". At a former job it was common (several times a week) to have a postal truck, another companies delivery truck or both sitting in the far end of our parking lot during the afternoon "burning time" so their "average route time" would not be decreased. That doesn't seem to be common now but we have another major problem. Companies such as Amazon somehow negotiate deals to provide the Post Office with a huge volume of packages to be delivered at below delivery cost. How do they make a profit? Well, they don't. They charge you and me huge sums of money to deliver packages and try to recover the rest of their losses with financial bailouts in COVID-19 stimulus bills (laws).

More than once it has been said that the employees of the DMV (the slow drivers license line at the Division of Motor Vehicles) are people that were fired from the Post Office because they work too quickly.

True but I have also run into the problem where a supplier will refuse to ship items unless they use their preferred supplier at grossly inflated prices. These suppliers are added to my list of don't trust and anyway the item can often be found at a better price and shipped at the most reasonable value.

A good friend of mine is retired from the USPS,and he was there for 50 years,so he saw a lot.

He loves to relate the history of the POD and the USPS.

I will pass along some of his experiences :

The postal service has changed drastically since the prior-1970's,when it was reorganized from the POD(post office department) to the USPS.

When it was the POD,it was supported by taxpayers,and the price of a stamp did not really matter.We had 2cent postcards and 3cent letters.

It was reorganized in the 1970's and became the USPS,and was taken off-budget.

No taxpayer funding allowed.It was designed to be self supporting from stamp and services sales.It was designed to be a non-profit organization.Any profits were taken away and put into the general fund.Profits from one year could not be used to offset any losses the next year.

In the 1970's the POD was very inefficient.It was very intense manual labor,with few mechanized operations.

That changed in the late 1970's with automated, and later, computerized sorting machines.

The pre-1970 machines required 17 people to sort 40,000 pieces of first class mail per hour.

By the year 2010,a single machine could sort 40,000 pieces per hour and required only 2 operators.

2 of the old machines were replaced by 15 of the new machines to handle the increased volume.All this without expanding the buildings and while reducing labor.

Do the math.They are not losing money except on paper.

Labor costs have decreased dramatically.Jobs have been deleted by attrition and retirement,and jobs have shifted into more technical fields.

All postal vehicles now have GPS on them to monitor their movements,and a barcode at the receiving end must be scanned upon entering a building to document the entry time and leaving time.No fudging delivery times any more.

This is not your grandpa's post office.

Some big companies want to privatize the service,so they can get their hands on first class mail,where the real money is,and they will pick the low hanging fruit,and leave the rural areas to sub contractors,like the vacuum cleaner and encyclopedia salesmen.

No sanctity of the mail,perhaps 2 day a week delivery.in rural areas.

It will be a big mistake to privatize it,IMHO.

Large bulk mail companies receive a discount by pre-sorting the mail with their own sorting machines,which saves labor and time at the Post office.

It seems to me the USPS is getting a lot of bad press that is not supported by facts.

Hello Stef,

In a former role, we were often getting and delivering things from/to USA. We found it cheaper to use a freight forwarding company.

Similar to TOLL in Australia, we had to purchase 20 satchels in advance, but got very good rates and "next flight" service with package tracking. We got a selection of 1kg, 3kg, 5kg as standard. Anything heavier was managed as freight anyway.

For deliveries to us, we had the consignment notes at our site, quote the number to the sender (and email copy) with "receiver pays".

For a while we were using DHL for international and "Ipec" in Australia. I think that our rates were an outcome of the number and volume of deliveries that we were processing, so there might be different discounts depending on the frequency that you utilise that service.

You would also need to check continuity of the service once the items get to Aus. Like who is your local agent for the international organisation?

These were the organisation I used now 10 years ago. Names and alternatives could well have changed since then, but Stef will understand the current replacements.

I tend to agree with you that in the past things were better and I bought items that were shipped TNT and had no problems with acceptable cost and delivery times.

Where I reside Express Post and Standard Post are delivered by the same contractor at the same time so I do not use express post as the premium is not value for money.

Interesting, my wife works at one of the USPS hubs. And delivery companies such as FEDEX uses the postal service to make deliveries in more rural areas, just due to the requirement that because the Postal Service needs to delivery at all locations.

It's even worse here in Australia.

A couple of years ago I was importing some carbide cutting inserts from a US supplier.

They were sent in a US postal service 1 pound post pack which cost me just over AUD12.

The inserts that were sent were not as ordered and the supplier asked me to return them at their cost.

Australia post wanted AUD74 to send them back in the very same post pack.

This was more than the initial cost of the goods and so the supplier and I negotiated a reduced price and I kept the goods.

I recently sent a priority paid 1kg parcel at a cost of $22 (supposed to be next day delivery) to Sydney which is a 4 hour drive away from me. The package arrived 8 days later. The next similar parcel was sent via courier at just $16 and did arrive the next day.

Interesting that you get your carbide inserts from USA for I buy those we need from either Korea or Japan at a better price and it was quicker delivery though with the lack of air transport due to covid the deliveries are much slower now.

Though I bought an item from China which had to be made and they apologised for taking a week to make it but it was freighted out in three days to AUS only to languish in customs for a further month and then arrived in three days after clearance.

As for being worse in AUS I fully agree we are ripped off at every turn. I recently imported an item and with the initial cost and duties and shipping it cost me $267 while to source the same item locally it ranged from $900 to $1800.

Similar with a set of injectors quoted at $275 each and I sourced them from USA for $240 for four including, charges and USPS shipping and the refundable core charge of $40 but the Aus Post cost to return the cores to USA was more so I kept the old cores.

First off when someone offers free returns then you have to pay postage that has nothing to do with the post office. The company offering free returns is ripping you off. The post office has to charge for their services and if the company where you made the purchase didn't prearrange postage or send you a prepaid label when you requested to return the product then they took advantage of you.

Next please understand that the US has been overpaying tariffs for shipping to every country around the world while charging an average of 10% of that tariff for years. Now we're trying to raise our tariffs (this includes postage) to, as I understand, around 75% to 85% of what we are charged by everyone else. For example in 2010 China imposed a 100.4% tariff on certain US goods coming into their country.

I think maybe you misunderstood my question, where for the same item I was quoted a postage rate difference of 700%. I was seeking to ascertain if our fellow USA subscribers were faced with the same disparity in shipping charges internally or externally.

Oh, I see. Yes we do have the same issues here. Those rates are not imposed by the postal service but by the company that you're dealing with. They like to blame the post office for high rates but when you get different rates from different companies for the same item and shipping time they are just profiteering. That's not a compliment.

Last month I made a purchase of goods from a supplier in California and the shipping was $11.73 while I researched the same product from another supplier, also from California, who's price for the product was $4 less but had a shipping charge of $23. Postal rates don't change for different distances within the country.

The actual shipping costs are up to the seller,and can be as high as they choose.

The key words are "shipping and handling",which can sometimes exceed the price of the item.I have cancelled many orders when this was the case.

I suggest shopping around,because it is a free market,and competition will bring the price down.If no one buys it,the price will drop.

I’ve ordered both personally and professionally from overseas, on projects in excesses of $3 million dollars.

the range is great, as far as smaller items, I do order from Amazon. And the prices i can figure out how cheap they can ship over seas to here.

i did a google search on amazon shipping to Australia,... But I can’t copy the link.

but it still won’t do you any good, because the postal service As well as other deceiveries will begin charging higher rates domestically.

I actually order from Amazon Aus for items I find on Amazon US and here is the interesting thing the prices quoted on Amazon US and AUS are the same dollar values no exchange fluctuations and the postage has so far been very reasonable or even free shipping.

We are a US company with several dealers in Australia that carry our products. Shipping costs do vary greatly depending on package size, weight, and timing. We have found that DHL is usually the least inexpensive by quite a margin from US to AU but not always. We check multiple carriers for every shipment. If you are purchasing from a company that has a preferred carrier and uses them exclusively, there are times when you will be paying exorbitant amounts.

I am wary of any company that will only use their preferred supplier for as you say they are loading up the price. I understand the price variations on different items but my original gripe was the up to 700% shipping price difference for the same item.

Sometimes it has to do with price comparison on sites such as Amazon. A seller quotes a good price on an item but makes up the difference in the "postage and handling". It's the same as airlines and hotels do, making up the difference in hidden charges.

The tariffs of importing and exporting are complicated, confusing and almost never make any sense. When one adds to this mess the chaos of politics, particularly when newly elected politicians revoke trade treaties on what seems like a whim, then chaos and uncertainty rules. Adding to this an advocate that wants your business (tariff lawyer) to expedite your shipment can mitigate the uncaring bureaucrats along the way but of course these advocates want a cut, too.

Recently I have reporting to those that import items to the us from Australia that there have been assembly line discrepancies, in turn they have been very accommodating. When allies work together, they can accomplish anything.

Tariffs are taxes.