Go To Great Panes

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2008

Shipping is going up for certain services on January 18, 2009.

First Class will be staying the same for the time being, the new rates can be seen here:

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2008

Have you considered getting a post office box to protect your personal information? The USPS website now has a search engine that allows you to find information about local post office box sizes, availability and pricing:

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2008

Need to know what the USPS holiday shipping deadlines are?

Checkout this page from their website–keep in mind they don’t make guarantees for First Class or Priority Mail!

When the FAQ page loads, click “2008 Holiday Shipping Deadlines” from the hot topic list on the right:

If you have a Paypal account and a scale, you can take advantage of Paypal’s shipping label service:

1. Log in to Paypal, you’ll be on the “My Account Overview” page.

2. Click the “Profile” link to go to the Profile Summary page.

3. Under “Selling Preferences”, click on “Shipping Preferences”.

4. There you can select your default shipping carrier and opt to display the ship button next to transactions on the “My Account” page. Save each of your changes.

5. Now go back to the “My Account Overview” page. You should see a column that is labeled “Order status/Actions”. A drop down menu for printing shipping labels should now appear for payments you’ve received (you also have the option of just adding tracking info or just marking a package as shipped). If you click the link and ship the package through it, the ship button will change to say Shipped, Track. Clicking “Track” will take you to the tracking page for the service you sent the package through.

Important Notes:
• Every label you print through Paypal will get Delivery Confirmation automatically–you can’t opt out of it.
• Delivery Confirmation is free on Priority Mail packages, and discounted to 19¢ on First Class and Parcel Post.
• First Class Mail Envelopes/Packages with Delivery Confirmation must be at least 3/4 inch thick or in a rigid mailer (see here for 10.2.2 Eligible Matter), or it will be bumped up to Priority Mail. (And it may arrive “postage due” for the amount between the price you paid and the rate for sending the package Priority Mail.)

You can even use Paypal shipping if your customer didn’t pay you using Paypal–see here:

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2011
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

Before we get to postage there’s two important things about packaging your international shipments:

1. Always use a customs form, and if it is something you sold you should check the box for ‘merchandise’ or ‘other’, whichever your form has on it. They are easy to fill out–name, address, package contents & value. More help for customs forms here: Do I need a customs form?

2. Always include an invoice that reflects the contents & their price (having the recipient info there is good too). I know a lot of folks don’t bother with receipt of any kind when mailing out their goods, but with international packages it is important to have it in the package–and required by law in some countries.

If customs decides to stop your package (they do random picks), they will try to confirm the package value, and if your package has supporting documents inside that match what the customs form declares, they will usually go with that. If you don’t have info about the price of the goods inside, or are missing a customs form all together, they can guess at the value, and it is usually a much higher guess than what was actually paid causing a hassle for your buyer.

We struggled with setting prices for international shipping, but after some research we came up with this plan:

• United States (on Etsy you’ll also need “United States Minor Outlying Islands” and US Territories each as its own entry, shipping USPS the rates are the same as zone 8 shipping)
• Canada
• Mexico
• Everywhere Else

A lot of that decision was based on this info, looking at shipping via International First Class:

Size:
• Packages up to 4 pounds
• No more than 24 inches long
• No more than 36 inches in combined length, height, and depth
• At least large enough to accommodate the postage, address, customs form, and other required elements on the address side.

Source: USPS International Mail Manual
From the “240 First-Class Mail International” page, from the “241 Description and Physical Characteristics, 241.242 Dimensions” section: http://pe.usps.gov/text/imm/immc2_016.htm#ep2368227

(There’s more info there about other packaging too if you need it.)

I took a look at the country list here:

Country Listing:
http://pe.usps.com/text/imm/immpg.htm

and saw that for First Class International, Canada and Mexico were the only countries in zones 1 & 2 (respectively). All other countries are in zones 3 through 9. Then I looked at this chart:

First-Class Mail International:
https://www.usps.com/ship/first-class-international.htm

and saw that for packages up to 1 oz, the rate was the same anywhere in the world (this is new as of April 2011).

For packages over 1 oz, zones 1 & 2 are significantly less expensive than other zones–that’s Canada and Mexico, our North American neighbors. We give them each their own rate in our listings.

Everywhere Else: For packages over 1 oz shipping out of N. America, there are only two price groups for First Class. All other countries fall in zones 3 to 5, and zones 6 to 9 but the rates for those two groups are pretty similar, with less than $1.00 difference between the two groups all the way up to 4 lbs.

Since there are so many countries with rates that are nearly the same for zones 3-5 and 6-9, I just lump them together as Everywhere Else and charge based on zone 3-5 rates (the higher of the two groups). That way we’re never shorting ourselves on shipping charges, and the over-charge is never more than $1.00.

If you look at the chart below, you can see how the zones compare (rates effective January 2012):

Now that you have a feel for the international shipping zones & package size restrictions, you don’t even need the USPS website’s shipping calculator to estimate your shipping costs, which often hides the First Class rates.

If you don’t have a scale to weigh your packages you can take them to the PO and get weights for items that you’ll typically ship, but a scale is really worth its weight in gold for the convenience of printing out shipping labels (through Paypal Shipping, USPS Shipping Assistant, or other services from home).

Need to insure your International First Class package?

USPS doesn’t offer insurance for this service but you can insure through third-party insurers for less than USPS charges for domestic packages. See the “Shipping Insurance” post on the main Shipping page of this blog–link on the right in gold under “Pages”, or click here:

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2011
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2011-2012
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

If you like printing your shipping labels from your computer and want the option to ship to buyers via First-Class Mail®–either Domestic or International–without a subscription to a postage service or using Paypal, the USPS Shipping Assistant can help. (Sadly, it only works on PCs, not on Macs.)

It is a small program that you download from the USPS website, and it allows you to print labels for both domestic and international shipments. You can ship First Class, Priority Mail or any other service the USPS offers with labels generated through this program. It’s free and easy to use.

What’s the catch?

You can’t pay for postage with it (unless you have a subscription postage service). You just affix postage stamps to the package in addition to the label. When I am at the post office, I pick up some stamps of varying values to cover the bases–75¢, 45¢, 20¢, 10¢, 5¢, 2¢ and 1¢. I keep enough on-hand to make up postage for any combo I might need plus, I think it’s kind of fun to get a package with a fun mix of stamps on it.

Please note: All packages heavier than 13 ounces with only postage stamps to cover the price of shipping must be taken to the post office to be shipped, both for domestic and international mailing.

Then why use it?

You get a nicely printed label for your package to help speed it through the system & the discounted electronic rate for Delivery Confirmation for domestic mail (free).

Shipping internationally?

The Shipping Assistant even prints the customs form right on the label for you–it asks for the information as you fill out the label details, and prints out ready to ship–except for the postage, of course!

USPS Shipping Assistant:

Download it here: http://www.usps.com/shippingassistant

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2011-2012
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

If you have a package that

• is missing en-route,
• has Delivery Confirmation that says it’s delivered but the customer doesn’t have it,
• you suspect was stolen,
• has been rifled through or
• has arrived without its contents

it may be time to contact the post office.  Shipping times may vary for different times of the year as well as different regions throughout the US, but if it’s been three weeks and you didn’t send it “Media Mail”, it’s probably time to look for it.

First, we ask the receiver to look around their porch, back door, garage, etc., and to check with the neighbors to see if the postal employee left it with them. It might seem obvious, but often packages are left where you wouldn’t expect to find them, and sometimes well-intentioned neighbors hold onto a package accidentally for a month. (Feel free to share the odd places you’ve found packages in the comments below!)

If you purchased Delivery Confirmation (DC), insurance or paid for one of the higher end services that includes a tracking number, you should start by calling one of three places:

• the post office you sent it from,
• the post office you sent it to or
• the USPS toll free number 1-800-ASK-USPS

They will call each other about the missing package to see if it’s in either of the post offices. They can track the package using the DC number, even if you’ve already checked on-line, they are privy to more details that might help.

We had a package that was missing, and when I called the destination post office and the toll free hotline number they both saw that the package had arrived at the destination post office though I couldn’t see that online using the DC number. The destination post office said that they didn’t know what happened to it after that. The toll free number folks said all they do is call the destination post office, and, well, I already knew what they had to say…

When I asked the hotline person what happens next, they said nothing, that’s the end of the line. They told me that unless I bought insurance there is nothing else that can be done, but I found out that’s not true.

I asked the hotline person if the info was gathered someplace, so if lots of packages go missing they get an idea of what location/route was having issues. They said no, that’s it.

I just couldn’t believe that this information was unimportant, so after a good deal of research that I found the US Postal Inspector’s website. I don’t know why it was so hard to come across this information, nor why the USPS Help Hotline wouldn’t have directed me there when there was nothing else they could do, but it was and they didn’t.

Happily our package turned up–I think had I not been persistant with keeping the post office looking for it I would have had to re-send the shipment and take a business loss.

Even if you didn’t purchase insurance or delivery confirmation, you can report your missing package/missing contents to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service by filling out this form:

https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/forms/MLNtRcvd.aspx

If you prefer to mail it to them, you can print out the mail theft report–it’s a PDF file:

http://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/radDocs/Mail_Theft_Complaints.pdf

You may not get your money or goods back, but you can help the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and thereby everyone who uses the US Postal Service, by reporting any of the issues at the top of this post. If they aren’t made aware of problems, they won’t have a chance to fix them.

You can contact them by phone also by calling 1-877-876-2455 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in all time zones:

https://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/tollfreeno.htm

or check out their entire website for more info:

http://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/

Occasionally you’ll have an international buyer request that a package be sent with the “gift” box checked on the customs form, rather than “documents”, “commercial samples”, or “other items”. If the package isn’t a gift, I won’t mark it as one.

First off, marking your package as a gift will not automatically make it exempt from customs fees, from the usps.com site:

“Items declared as gifts may still be subject to duty and taxes.”
http://faq.usps.com/eCustomer/iq/usps…

Secondly, I prefer to run our business as legally as possible, which means not taking part in activities for which I could end up in legal trouble. In each section of the Postal Service Employee’s Acceptance rules for international packages it has the following info:

123.712 Postal Service Employee’s Acceptance of PS Form 2976
The Postal Service acceptance employee must do the following when accepting PS Form 2976 from the sender:
a. Instruct the sender how to complete, legibly and accurately, PS Form 2976, as required. The sender’s failure to complete the form properly can delay delivery of the item or inconvenience the sender and addressee. Moreover, a false, misleading, or incomplete declaration can result in the seizure or return of the item and/or in criminal or civil penalties. The Postal Service assumes no responsibility for the accuracy of information that the sender enters on PS Form 2976.

Source: http://pe.usps.gov/text/imm/immc1_008.htm

So rather than risk criminal or civil penalties, we’ll be checking the appropriate box for the order. How about you?