[Amps] Shipping Costs

Wed Mar 1 16:58:09 EST 2017

Manfred is soooo correct.

MFJ for example refuses the now-best "International Priority Mail" nor any cheaper USPS modes and dear Martin did not answer my paper letter to him abt it.  Then there are the items sold only in 115VAC to my 220 nation.  Some USA sellers flatly refuse to ship to Thailand, book publishers for example.  I get re-mailer service from a USA adr to me for a fee and everything comes that way, so often have to send ham radio parts to re-mailer just to get past USA vendors fear of overseas shipping.  Import duties and customs are real, but my problem, not the shippers;  however, USA shippers will not help by marking parts orders "parts" etc.

Amazon recently started using something called "Global Expedited" that works very good even with customs.  But many fear P.O.Boxes, which for me is best way;  my home delivery is by motorbike.

Anything shipped by non-USPS from USA COSTS A FORTUNE, often more than the item cost.  Sellers need to reexamine their international customer base especially on the Big Three shipping costs, 220VAC products, customs markings, language matching, in-warrantee items, PayPal/credit card rules, and so on.  USA vendors, the "rest of the world" needs ur attention.

73, remote Charly

ps, I never have seen a Brown Truck in HS.

________________________________
From: Amps <amps-bounces at contesting.com> on behalf of Manfred Mornhinweg <manfred at ludens.cl>
Sent: Wednesday, March 1, 2017 7:03 PM
To: amps at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [Amps] Shipping Costs

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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