5 ms·

As U.S. Postage Rates Continue to Rise, the USPS Gives the Chinese a 'Free Ride'

69 points by Integer 9y ago

totalZero 9y ago
> As Amazon’s Vice President of Global Policy Paul Misener pointed out: > “The cost to ship a one-pound package from South Carolina to New York City would run nearly $6; from Beijing to NYC: $3.66.” > While sending that same one-pound package from New York City back to Beijing via USPS International Mail would cost in the ballpark of $50. Someone should really do something about this!
- lwansbrough 9y ago
  The problem is worse here in Canada. My friend does a significant amount of business with Chinese companies, and he says this is due to a UN treaty which classifies China as a developing country.
  - AdamSC1 9y ago
    Example, I had a friend who was recently looking to start an wholesale business in Canada. Let's pretend for sake of the example that he was selling widgets. He found he could import 300 widgets from China and have them landed in Toronto for a shipping fee of roughly $17. To ship that same set of widgets from Toronto to a store two cities away was going to cost him $349. In fact for $17, he could send 1 widget within the same city he was in directly to a customer. It gets even worse if he wants to send that package of widgets to the states for something like Amazon FBA. Once again, it would cost $17 to ship directly from China but would run him $1400 from Toronto to New York.
Freak_NL 9y ago
This is well-known to anyone who ever looked into AliExpress and other Chinese online stores. Most of the stuff you can buy there has free shipping to pretty much everywhere. The reason why is known too (international postal agreements). What surprises me today is that nothing seems to have changed yet. Last year it was rumoured that the free ride would gradually end starting this year, but so far the Chinese retailers don't seem to be impacted much — shipping costs are effectively zero for customers in Europe and North America. If you are unfamiliar with this weird side-effect of the global economy, it helps explain why brick-and-mortar shops selling cheap Chinese stuff for mere cents can exist with a meaningful profit margin.
- the-dude 9y ago
  There have been changes : PostNL does not deliver these packages at the door anymore and you have to pick it up at a service location.
  - Freak_NL 9y ago
    PostNL seemingly does this only for packages (not envelopes; these are delivered as you'd expect) sent via China Post containing a '3S' tracking code. A recent purchase of mine got delivered to my door by PostNL; it was shipped via 'AliExpress Standard Shipping' which apparently doesn't get rerouted.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  >This is well-known to anyone who ever looked into AliExpress and other Chinese online stores. Most of the stuff you can buy there has free shipping to pretty much everywhere And there is - just for the record - a perverse incentive to multiply packages. Here in Italy there is an import duty exemption set at 22 Euros, so what often happens with free shipping via Postal Service (unlike what you would do on local (EU) online stores, where you try to get as much as you can from a same seller to minimize postage and handling) is that people order single items from different vendors, so that each single packet is lower than 22 Euros, and they have the bonus of being sure not to pay any import duty.
watchdogtimer 9y ago
The article mentions E-packet rates apply to packages less than 36" in length and less than 2 kg (4.4 lbs). What are the rates like for packages that exceed these dimensions? Are US-based e-commerce sellers any safer if they sell larger items?
- pashky 9y ago
  From my experience it's indeed that once thing is bigger/heavier than this (or fragile and must be packed to exceed those dimensions), shipping rate in aliexpress shops quickly hikes to $20-$80 thus making local options a much better value.
thisisit 9y ago
"Cross-border e-commerce is currently one of the fastest growing economic sectors on the planet, but it is one that U.S.-based entrepreneurs cannot hope to compete in due to the extreme disparity of shipping rates." But there are other entrepreneurs who are profiting from this disparity too and never mentioned in the article - the dropshippers. People are able to sell stuff easily without having to worry about warehousing, shipping etc
- sharemywin 9y ago
  except more and more people are realizing that they can go to ebay or aliexpress less your margin.
kristofferR 9y ago
Working links: https://archive.fo/HafaR https://archive.fo/HafaR (page 1) https://archive.fo/UyA29 https://archive.fo/UyA29 (page 2)
timthelion 9y ago
The level of skew that "free trade" has created is pretty insane here in Europe. Shipping to Berlin is cheaper from China than it is from Prague. But that's not all. If I make an electronic device in Prague, and sell it to someone in Berlin, I am legally required to mark it with my address and a CE label. Regulators can then write to me and demand documentation on the devices safety, and if I don't comply within 8 days, I can be forced to pay a large fine and destroy all European inventory. However, the Chinese manufacturer, can and does, put a fake address on the CE label, never has to go to the trouble to document safety, and has no European inventory that could be destroyed in the case that the EU decides the device is unsafe. Its just plain cheaper, and less risky, to develop and produce a device in China and then ship in in small quantities as demand arises.
- icebraining 9y ago
  On the other hand, that's exactly why I only buy cheap crap from Chinese online stores, while I spend real money on EU stores, since they provide safety and warranties. I quite like the balance, personally. The shipping rates are certainly weird, and I do think they should be reviewed, although I think the internal rates are too high, but I admittedly don't know the cost structure.
  - kogepathic 9y ago
    > although I think the internal rates are too high They would probably be cheaper if they weren't subsidizing postal rates for other countries. I find it amusing when you have a problem on AliExpress and the seller suggests you mail it back to them. Unless the product has a very high value it almost always costs more than the product's value to send it back to China. Luckily AliExpress customer service seems to realize this and will often grant refunds without requiring you to return the product. eBay really sucks on this regard; it's very difficult to get a refund for a defective item without paying handsomely to ship it back.
    - Freak_NL 9y ago
      > I find it amusing when you have a problem on AliExpress and the seller suggests you mail it back to them. Most of the sellers know this and simply ship you a new item or refund you though — at least for comparatively cheap items.
ihaveahadron 9y ago
They're building most of our shit. "Free ride" indeed. Bad mouth them after you've given up half of your shit being made. See how "superior" you are with half an iPhone. Dumbasses As "superior" as you think you are, you can't even manage to make machinery to do what some malnourished Chinese people can do? Beyond pathetic.
OliverJones 9y ago
Ordinary citizens can't affect this kind of policy. But US and European megacorporations can surely put pressure on governments to reform this rate imbalance, can't they? Can't Amazon, Wal-Mart and Macys counter the influence of Alibaba on the US government? If not, what the heck. Time to emigrate. There's a way to solve this problem. How about adding an inspection at ports of entry for these packages? The inspections would verify sender addresses, consumer safety, and other compliance with receiving-country regulations. It should be possible to get packages through the inspection process reasonably efficiently. If shippers had the expectation that these ePacket items would clear inspection in something like 120 days, that should work. It would serve the needs of customers who really need the cheapest stuff, preserve safety regulation compliance, and give customers an incentive to buy from merchants closer to home. This is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but not really.
- sharemywin 9y ago
  Don't kid yourself there's as much epacket on amazon as aliexpress.
geomark 9y ago
While the article is focused on shipping from China to the U.S. via e-packet, it seems China has similar agreements with other countries' postal systems. I live in Thailand and get free shipping from most Chinese merchants selling on Aliexpress. Some of those items can be purchased locally and shipping is not usually free. I've seen comments from people in Australia getting the same thing. Seems like merchants around the world are taking the same beating on shipping costs when competing with China.
sschueller 9y ago
This is also a huge problem for the Swiss postal service which has to sort all mail from China by hand. In the next few years the Swiss postal service will start to charge additional fees to the recipients of such packages to cover their losses. I think a very large problem is that the packages are non standardised which prevents them from being sorted by machine easily.
- micah94 9y ago
  This is ironically why the ePacket was created as mentioned in the article. They get their standardization, but continue to lose money. And our (US) rates continue to rise. Get rid of it and it reverts to U.N. mandated rates which are even cheaper.
gruez 9y ago
>Yes, the United States and, in a roundabout way, the U.S. taxpayer is footing the bil How can this be? I thought usps was self sufficient?
- sharemywin 9y ago
  part of the reason stamp prices keep going up.
  - vinay427 9y ago
    That's not really true, adjusting for inflation: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/US_Postage_History.svg/800px-US_Postage_History.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/US... The lighter blue line is in May 2016 cents.
- cannonedhamster 9y ago
  Internal rates have gone up for USPS customers to subsidize Chinese vendors. American taxpayers are generally the consumers of the USPS. They are still self-sufficient.
  - gruez 9y ago
    still, it's a roundabout way to say "americans" (more specifically, "americans using USPS").
sytelus 9y ago
So package from China to USA costs much much less than other way around because of an International treaty. More details on treaty is in this article but I still don't get it why this treaty was made in first place: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/the-postal-service-is-losing-millions-a-year-to-help-you-buy-cheap-stuff-from-china https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/...
mark212 9y ago
Article quotes a USPS guy saying the total losses on cross-border parcels is $71 million. Compared with the service’s losses of $5 _billion_ this doesn’t strike me as an actual outrage.

69 points by Integer 9y ago

> As Amazon’s Vice President of Global Policy Paul Misener pointed out: > “The cost to ship a one-pound package from South Carolina to New York City would run nearly $6; from Beijing to NYC: $3.66.” > While sending that same one-pound package from New York City back to Beijing via USPS International Mail would cost in the ballpark of $50. Someone should really do something about this!

lwansbrough 9y ago
The problem is worse here in Canada. My friend does a significant amount of business with Chinese companies, and he says this is due to a UN treaty which classifies China as a developing country.
- AdamSC1 9y ago
  Example, I had a friend who was recently looking to start an wholesale business in Canada. Let's pretend for sake of the example that he was selling widgets. He found he could import 300 widgets from China and have them landed in Toronto for a shipping fee of roughly $17. To ship that same set of widgets from Toronto to a store two cities away was going to cost him $349. In fact for $17, he could send 1 widget within the same city he was in directly to a customer. It gets even worse if he wants to send that package of widgets to the states for something like Amazon FBA. Once again, it would cost $17 to ship directly from China but would run him $1400 from Toronto to New York.

Freak_NL 9y ago

This is well-known to anyone who ever looked into AliExpress and other Chinese online stores. Most of the stuff you can buy there has free shipping to pretty much everywhere. The reason why is known too (international postal agreements). What surprises me today is that nothing seems to have changed yet. Last year it was rumoured that the free ride would gradually end starting this year, but so far the Chinese retailers don't seem to be impacted much — shipping costs are effectively zero for customers in Europe and North America. If you are unfamiliar with this weird side-effect of the global economy, it helps explain why brick-and-mortar shops selling cheap Chinese stuff for mere cents can exist with a meaningful profit margin.

the-dude 9y ago
There have been changes : PostNL does not deliver these packages at the door anymore and you have to pick it up at a service location.
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  PostNL seemingly does this only for packages (not envelopes; these are delivered as you'd expect) sent via China Post containing a '3S' tracking code. A recent purchase of mine got delivered to my door by PostNL; it was shipped via 'AliExpress Standard Shipping' which apparently doesn't get rerouted.
jaclaz 9y ago
>This is well-known to anyone who ever looked into AliExpress and other Chinese online stores. Most of the stuff you can buy there has free shipping to pretty much everywhere And there is - just for the record - a perverse incentive to multiply packages. Here in Italy there is an import duty exemption set at 22 Euros, so what often happens with free shipping via Postal Service (unlike what you would do on local (EU) online stores, where you try to get as much as you can from a same seller to minimize postage and handling) is that people order single items from different vendors, so that each single packet is lower than 22 Euros, and they have the bonus of being sure not to pay any import duty.

watchdogtimer 9y ago

The article mentions E-packet rates apply to packages less than 36" in length and less than 2 kg (4.4 lbs). What are the rates like for packages that exceed these dimensions? Are US-based e-commerce sellers any safer if they sell larger items?

pashky 9y ago
From my experience it's indeed that once thing is bigger/heavier than this (or fragile and must be packed to exceed those dimensions), shipping rate in aliexpress shops quickly hikes to $20-$80 thus making local options a much better value.

thisisit 9y ago

"Cross-border e-commerce is currently one of the fastest growing economic sectors on the planet, but it is one that U.S.-based entrepreneurs cannot hope to compete in due to the extreme disparity of shipping rates." But there are other entrepreneurs who are profiting from this disparity too and never mentioned in the article - the dropshippers. People are able to sell stuff easily without having to worry about warehousing, shipping etc

sharemywin 9y ago
except more and more people are realizing that they can go to ebay or aliexpress less your margin.

kristofferR 9y ago

Working links: https://archive.fo/HafaR https://archive.fo/HafaR (page 1) https://archive.fo/UyA29 https://archive.fo/UyA29 (page 2)

timthelion 9y ago

The level of skew that "free trade" has created is pretty insane here in Europe. Shipping to Berlin is cheaper from China than it is from Prague. But that's not all. If I make an electronic device in Prague, and sell it to someone in Berlin, I am legally required to mark it with my address and a CE label. Regulators can then write to me and demand documentation on the devices safety, and if I don't comply within 8 days, I can be forced to pay a large fine and destroy all European inventory. However, the Chinese manufacturer, can and does, put a fake address on the CE label, never has to go to the trouble to document safety, and has no European inventory that could be destroyed in the case that the EU decides the device is unsafe. Its just plain cheaper, and less risky, to develop and produce a device in China and then ship in in small quantities as demand arises.

icebraining 9y ago
On the other hand, that's exactly why I only buy cheap crap from Chinese online stores, while I spend real money on EU stores, since they provide safety and warranties. I quite like the balance, personally. The shipping rates are certainly weird, and I do think they should be reviewed, although I think the internal rates are too high, but I admittedly don't know the cost structure.
- kogepathic 9y ago
  > although I think the internal rates are too high They would probably be cheaper if they weren't subsidizing postal rates for other countries. I find it amusing when you have a problem on AliExpress and the seller suggests you mail it back to them. Unless the product has a very high value it almost always costs more than the product's value to send it back to China. Luckily AliExpress customer service seems to realize this and will often grant refunds without requiring you to return the product. eBay really sucks on this regard; it's very difficult to get a refund for a defective item without paying handsomely to ship it back.
  - Freak_NL 9y ago
    > I find it amusing when you have a problem on AliExpress and the seller suggests you mail it back to them. Most of the sellers know this and simply ship you a new item or refund you though — at least for comparatively cheap items.

ihaveahadron 9y ago

They're building most of our shit. "Free ride" indeed. Bad mouth them after you've given up half of your shit being made. See how "superior" you are with half an iPhone. Dumbasses As "superior" as you think you are, you can't even manage to make machinery to do what some malnourished Chinese people can do? Beyond pathetic.

OliverJones 9y ago

Ordinary citizens can't affect this kind of policy. But US and European megacorporations can surely put pressure on governments to reform this rate imbalance, can't they? Can't Amazon, Wal-Mart and Macys counter the influence of Alibaba on the US government? If not, what the heck. Time to emigrate. There's a way to solve this problem. How about adding an inspection at ports of entry for these packages? The inspections would verify sender addresses, consumer safety, and other compliance with receiving-country regulations. It should be possible to get packages through the inspection process reasonably efficiently. If shippers had the expectation that these ePacket items would clear inspection in something like 120 days, that should work. It would serve the needs of customers who really need the cheapest stuff, preserve safety regulation compliance, and give customers an incentive to buy from merchants closer to home. This is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but not really.

sharemywin 9y ago
Don't kid yourself there's as much epacket on amazon as aliexpress.

geomark 9y ago

While the article is focused on shipping from China to the U.S. via e-packet, it seems China has similar agreements with other countries' postal systems. I live in Thailand and get free shipping from most Chinese merchants selling on Aliexpress. Some of those items can be purchased locally and shipping is not usually free. I've seen comments from people in Australia getting the same thing. Seems like merchants around the world are taking the same beating on shipping costs when competing with China.

sschueller 9y ago

This is also a huge problem for the Swiss postal service which has to sort all mail from China by hand. In the next few years the Swiss postal service will start to charge additional fees to the recipients of such packages to cover their losses. I think a very large problem is that the packages are non standardised which prevents them from being sorted by machine easily.

micah94 9y ago
This is ironically why the ePacket was created as mentioned in the article. They get their standardization, but continue to lose money. And our (US) rates continue to rise. Get rid of it and it reverts to U.N. mandated rates which are even cheaper.

gruez 9y ago

>Yes, the United States and, in a roundabout way, the U.S. taxpayer is footing the bil How can this be? I thought usps was self sufficient?

sharemywin 9y ago
part of the reason stamp prices keep going up.
- vinay427 9y ago
  That's not really true, adjusting for inflation: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/US_Postage_History.svg/800px-US_Postage_History.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/US... The lighter blue line is in May 2016 cents.
cannonedhamster 9y ago
Internal rates have gone up for USPS customers to subsidize Chinese vendors. American taxpayers are generally the consumers of the USPS. They are still self-sufficient.
- gruez 9y ago
  still, it's a roundabout way to say "americans" (more specifically, "americans using USPS").

sytelus 9y ago

So package from China to USA costs much much less than other way around because of an International treaty. More details on treaty is in this article but I still don't get it why this treaty was made in first place: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/the-postal-service-is-losing-millions-a-year-to-help-you-buy-cheap-stuff-from-china https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/...

mark212 9y ago

Article quotes a USPS guy saying the total losses on cross-border parcels is $71 million. Compared with the service’s losses of $5 _billion_ this doesn’t strike me as an actual outrage.