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Re: [Amps] Shipping Costs

To: amps@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [Amps] Shipping Costs
From: Manfred Mornhinweg <manfred@ludens.cl>
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2017 19:03:05 +0000
List-post: <amps@contesting.com">mailto:amps@contesting.com>
Despite being a tad off-topic, I will add my input to this thread, from the point of view of someone living in Chile, and often buying stuff in the USA and many other countries. This might be useful information for those shipping to Chile, and to some other countries.

The decision between using the postal service, or any of the private shipping companies, is an easy one in my case: All the private companies will only deliver to urban street addresses, and I live on a rural property. So, UPS, FedEx, DHL, TNT and all those others can't deliver to me. As simple as that. To use any of those carriers, I have to get the seller to ship to one of my friends in a nearby city, and ask that friend to receive the parcel for me, which usually involves paying when it arrives. It's cumbersome.

Instead postal shipping works well, to my P.O.Box in the nearest city.

When a parcel for me arrives in the post office, they place a notice in my P.O.Box, and also notify me by SMS. I drive downtown to the post office, take that paper from the box, go to the counter, and retrieve my parcel. I have to sign a receipt at that time, and if the parcel contains merchandise above a certain value (about 100 dollars), I have to pay the import tax (6%) and VAT (19%), plus a small handling fee of around one dollar. For parcels valued less than that limit, or private parcels of no commercial value, I don't have to pay anything when picking them up.

Instead when something arrives via any of the private carriers, they ALWAYS charge for the taxes, even in cases when the item is legally tax-free! They must be pocketing the money. In addition they charge a high service fee, that often is higher than the total taxes! This fee varies according to the company and the service chosen. Some of these companies offer services that are very cheap for the sender, often cheaper than shipping by mail, but then they charge the real, expensive shipping to the receiver of the parcel! They don't mention this to the sender. This has caused much conflict between sellers and buyers. Some Chinese sellers offer free shipping by UPS, TNT, DHL, etc - and then the carrier charges a hefty fee at delivery time!

While I still lived in city and used private carriers more frequently, two times FedEx tried to charge me twice: Once when delivering a parcel, and then again, months later, by letter! Fortunately in both cases I could provide evidence that I had already paid. I don't know if they did it due to incompetence, or deliberately to extort some more money.

All this trouble just doesn't happen with the postal service.

The good side about the private companies is the speed. They typically take just 4 to 7 days to deliver. The postal service instead takes anytime from 2 weeks to 3 months, with most of the delay happening in postal customs processing. Even legally tax-free parcels often are delayed a long time until being allowed out of the customs office.

About reliability: In 30 years placing orders worldwide so far I have had no loss with any of the private shippers, while roughly 2% of the postal parcels got lost. The lost postal parcels have all been small, cheap, non-tracked items. There doesn't seem to be any specific countries that show a higher loss record to me, so I suppose that most parcels that are lost, get lost in the big heap at the Chilean postal customs office. Downwater of the customs office, ALL parcels in Chile are tracked, even if tracking was not requested by the originating postal service.

Everything sent by any trackable postal service, from anywhere in the world, has finally arrived, except for one parcel from Ukraine one year ago, and another parcel from the USA about 25 years ago. In both of those cases the tracking showed that the parcel left the country of origin and never arrived in the country of destination, and in both cases the insurance covered the loss.

I have had a higher number of problems with sellers not shipping, after having get paid. The largest percentage of non-shipping sellers, for me, have been from the UK. Maybe that was purely bad luck, I don't know. In contrast all items I ever ordered from Russia, Germany, China, and many less often ordered-from countries such as South Africa, Australia, Lithuania, Denmark, Norway, Bulgaria, were promptly shipped. The USA is a special case in this regard: Several times the sellers have pulled out, not shipping the item, but in all those cases they have promptly issued full refunds. Specially regarding ham radio items, I have had a number of cases where stores that clearly advertise that they do export sales, pulled out and issued a refund after I placed online orders, without giving explanations as to why they won't sell to me, and why they keep advertising export orders on their web sites.

The US postal service offers several different services. What I find works best for me is "International Priority Mail", and cheapest among this category is the subclass that uses standard-size boxes. This service is quick, reliable, and reasonably priced. The next higher service, International Express Mail, is more expensive and doesn't really work any better, while the next lower one, "International First Class Mail" is cheaper, but slower (often MUCH slower), and the boxes sometimes show up pretty battered. To be used only for non-urgent, not too expensive, robust or very well packed items. The Chilean postal service handles all three kinds in the same way.

In most other countries things are simpler: People simply ship items "by airmail", registering them to make them trackable, if so desired. That works well.

Finally one more note: 20 years ago I ordered from the USA more often than from all other countries together, because I got good prices and good service. Nowadays I order many more things from other countries, specially China but also several European countries, mainly for the MUCH lower shipping cost. Even postal shipping from the USA is more expensive than from most other countries - and many USA sellers are unwilling to ship by their postal service. Also many USA sellers refuse to ship to P.O.Boxes, even when shipping by mail. They claim a higher risk of lost parcels. I have never understood the reason for that, given that P.O.Box delivery is safer and more reliable than home delivery by the mailman! Maybe this is different in some other countries?

In any case international commerce by hams and other private people has become far easier and convenient than it ever was, thanks to the internet. Sellers and buyers can set all the restrictions and preferences they want, and still in most cases it's easy to find a matching buyer for something one has to sell, or a willing supplier of something one needs.

Manfred, XQ6FOD



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