UPS Shipping Costs Lately?

[RickB]

We too have ups account. You will notice a change in pricing when shipping business to business or business to residence.

Costs me more to ship 2 lbs to a residence 2 towns away (in the next state) than it does to ship that 2 lbs to a commercial address in Jacksonville, FL. (see my location in avatar)

 

[daugen]

Amazon is losing their shirt on free shipping. They are also losing their shirt on Amazon Prime because of shipping costs.

hey neighbor..., are you sure of this or is this just how you feel?
Amazon is so big I'm sure they are the largest customer for UPS. Though now they are sending more and more by USPS.
I'm only curious since I'm a heavy Amazon user particularly now living in the sticks.
Amazon does quite well if you live near one of their distribution centers I'd bet.
and I have Amazon Prime too, and love their movies.

of course recently they tried to tack on an extra 7 dollar fee on foodstuffs, calling it a pantry basket or some such contrived nonsense. I stopped buying that stuff from them, and what do you know, now I can get some of it both ways.
So yeah, they are looking to increase revenue to offset shipping costs, likely to folks like me where packages seem to get handled many times.

My last UPS shipment cost me between 5-7 dollars more than I remembered it "ought to cost".
I thought low gas prices would have helped offset their other rising transportation costs.

 

[doxford jim]

hey neighbor..., are you sure of this or is this just how you feel?
Amazon is so big I'm sure they are the largest customer for UPS. Though now they are sending more and more by USPS.
I'm only curious since I'm a heavy Amazon user particularly now living in the sticks.
Amazon does quite well if you live near one of their distribution centers I'd bet.
and I have Amazon Prime too, and love their movies.

of course recently they tried to tack on an extra 7 dollar fee on foodstuffs, calling it a pantry basket or some such contrived nonsense. I stopped buying that stuff from them, and what do you know, now I can get some of it both ways.
So yeah, they are looking to increase revenue to offset shipping costs, likely to folks like me where packages seem to get handled many times.

My last UPS shipment cost me between 5-7 dollars more than I remembered it "ought to cost".
I thought low gas prices would have helped offset their other rising transportation costs.

Greed is greed and UPS is no exception. I wouldn't touch them with a 10ft pole - been badly burnt by them before

 

[DennisArrow]

For me, $100 is kinda cheap to get Amazon prime...........did all of my Christmas shopping there and stuff through the year, a lot of stuff, get me so much more than the intitial cost of $100............PLUS....on the "smart" TVs we get the Amazon channel gizmo thing with LOTS of free movies and series........right now watching "The Sopranos" as I didn't have HBO back then.........anyway, till they do go under am gonna USe USE USe.........God bless......Dennis

 

[Kenneth in Texas]

My business ships ups and fedx daily and both their rates have gone way up in the past 6 months.

 

[PILOON]

Greed is greed and UPS is no exception. I wouldn't touch them with a 10ft pole - been badly burnt by them before

UPS across border is insane but UPS across Canada (within) is excellent, in fact very often better than CanPost.

 

[doxford jim]

UPS across border is insane but UPS across Canada (within) is excellent, in fact very often better than CanPost.

Burnt bad enough never to trust them again - ever!

 

[mark02tj]

On January 1, UPS (and FedEx too, I think) put in a new rate structure that was based on "dimensional weights". Basically this means that they're charging you based on the size of the box more so than the weight. Yes, weight is still a consideration but the box size now also plays a more important part than in the past.

I have a client that ships about 200 UPS packages a day. They estimate that this has the potential to drive up their shipping costs by more than 20%. They are working hard to figure out how to get the most product in the smallest box possible. Sometimes that means taking product out of it's normal packaging and packing product inside of other products. The savings in the shipping costs outweighs the labor that it takes to do all of this. This change also affected their "free shipping" policy.

Yesterday, my other half got some boxes from Macy's shipped via UPS. I was amazed at how densely the stuff was packed. It was clothing (go figure - SWMBO ordered clothes!! :laughing and rather than being just put in bags, it was almost like the stuff was vacuum packed in the bags to flatten them out so as much stuff as possible could be packed in the box.

 

[kc5dlo]

The dimensional weights program has actually been in place for several years. They just started enforcing it on Jan 1. In the past I never added the measurements when processing packages. Like was previously stated, this effects mostly the very light packages. One of our smaller boxes equals the rate of 4 lbs. I would say we rarely ship more than 2 lbs in that box. Also, residential deliveries are much more than business deliveries. Businesses run from home no longer count as a business address.

 

[Country Geek]

hey neighbor..., are you sure of this or is this just how you feel?
Amazon is so big I'm sure they are the largest customer for UPS. Though now they are sending more and more by USPS.

It's based on multiple news stories in the business press. For a couple of examples:

Is Amazon Prime Suffering From Its Own Success? - Forbes

Prime Is Killing Amazon's Profit

Amazon is a strange company in that the more they lose, the more investors seem to love them. I'm a loyal Prime customer (as I think anyone living in the sticks would be) but Amazon is eating huge shipping costs, even with the recent increase in the price of Prime. In turn, that forces other e-commerce vendors to eat all or most of their shipping costs to stay competitive. I'm surprised there hasn't been more pressure on UPS, FedEx, etc to drive down their prices like any other major company that dominates its segment does to their major suppliers.