TallTayl Posted January 10, 2016 Share Posted January 10, 2016 Hopefully everyone who sells online has heard the rates are increasing on the 17th of this month. One improvement: first class weight has increased from 13 oz to 15.99 ozfirst class rates will remain stable, close to what they are today.Priority rates will increase between 9.8-12.8%!Regional rate C boxes have been eliminated.A biggie: commercial based pricing (the discount we get using click and ship) will be eliminated. The prices online will be the same as at the counter.Stamps.com and endicia will still have slight commercial discounts, but will remain within 3% of usps rates.Etsy.com will still be discounted somewhat. Here's what endicia and stamps.com have to say:http://online-shipping-blog.endicia.com/usps-postage-shipping-rates-price-change-2016/http://www.stamps.com/usps/postage-rate-increase/So.... If you manually calculate shipping on your sites and/or on etsy, it might be a good time to raise rates. And on Etsy, it will be a great time to use their auto-calc features so you don't lose money to shipping.Oh, UPS and FedEx are increasing in kind, so usps will likely still be the most economical overall. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
franu61 Posted January 10, 2016 Share Posted January 10, 2016 (edited) Ugh! That means the shipping cost on supplies will go up too. Interesting that the costs are going up, but the IRS rate for mileage expense is going down. Edited January 10, 2016 by franu61 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TallTayl Posted January 10, 2016 Author Share Posted January 10, 2016 Here's a shipping label service i had no idea existed: Ship Easyhttp://shippingeasy.com/integrationpartners/The service is free for 50 or fewer shipments a month. And supposedly we'll get the commercial rates. Reading more now to see if it makes sense to join. Franu-i know right? The gas prices are lower than the past 5 or so years too. I sincerely hope the UsPS can hire enough holiday help with these increases in is last holiday season was rough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kandlekrazy Posted January 10, 2016 Share Posted January 10, 2016 Thanks for posting the info and the link to the shipping service. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TallTayl Posted January 10, 2016 Author Share Posted January 10, 2016 Here is another shipping service i just heard of. Have not yet done any research on it. GoShippo.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justajesuschick Posted January 10, 2016 Share Posted January 10, 2016 Here is another shipping service i just heard of. Have not yet done any research on it.GoShippo.com Shippo is the app I have linked to my website. Of course, I like that it pulls in data from my website so shipping is simple and saves me a ton of time. Great commercial pricing as well. However, the articles I have read would make it appear that commercial pricing will now be at parity with standard pricing which is unfortunate.My whole business is online based. That means I ship everything. Most local buyers (they make up less than 5% of my business) have me ship as I do not deliver and my business insurance really does not allow customers in my home. I mail 100 packages a month (or a little less) and while that does not make me a huge online seller, shipping cost is something I am going to have to watch carefully.The average increase percentage makes a difference of about .75 for one package. I only ship Priority Mail and almost exclusively use Regional Rate A and B boxes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TallTayl Posted January 10, 2016 Author Share Posted January 10, 2016 Yeah, the loss of commercial base pricing will hurt. Stamps.com and endicia will still be "slightly" lower, but within 3% of the published rates. Depending on the volume, it might not be economical to use those any more...It will be interesting to see how prices on Amazon and Ebay are adjusted to absorb the increases. There will sureley be a cascading effect that we will all have to get used to. Trying to think of marketing strategies to make it more tolerable. When i shop i tend to play the shopping cart game. How much more can i biy before the shipping prices rise? For us, on the selling end, what can we do to encourage bigger retail purchase sizes to "save" money on shipping? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnvyCandles Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 GRR, the click and ship discount was so large!! While I do like that First Class rates will be available online (instead of having to use Paypal like the lovely TallTayl showed me how to use), it still is rough....I am looking at both of those shipping websites now... Of course price increases are bound to happen but the discount from click and ship was so nice!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TallTayl Posted January 11, 2016 Author Share Posted January 11, 2016 We can thank Congress for forcing the USPs to pre-fund all that retirement burden - unlike any other business. Behind the curtain it seems to all be about keeping UPS and Fed-Ex competitive.Not sure if the first class labels will be available via click and ship with the change, just that the first class weight limit increased to 15.99 oz (like Etsy's earlier benefit). I will also miss those commercial rates :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnvyCandles Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 Shippo and Shipping Easy seem to be free... I will look and compare pricing...has anyone checked them yet? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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