6 ms·

I'm the source. And yes, we are also being turned away at the depot. "Shipping limits" and "pickup limits" are used interchangeably because they're one and the

by jgjr 6y ago

I'm the source. And yes, we are also being turned away at the depot. "Shipping limits" and "pickup limits" are used interchangeably because they're one and the same limitation currently. I even offered to drive our packages in a UHAUL to Las Vegas or Denver hubs to insert them myself and was told a hold would be placed on our account.

SilasX 6y ago
I hate to be the one to ask, but ... why can’t they throttle demand and increase capacity by raising prices?
- Retric 6y ago
  They did as everyone can just pay over the counter rates without issue, because you can ship anonymously.
  - ghshephard 6y ago
    Nobody is shipping 500 packages/day over the counter.
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      I would love to try this one day as long as the Benny Hill song can play in the background as I make trips from my van into a retail UPS store.
      - CaliforniaKarl 6y ago
        I have a friend who works in a UPS Store. He has been working 10+-hour days for the last two weeks, on top of a bicycle commute (which will sometimes turn into an hour-long walk if the winds are bad), picking up groceries, etc.. They have as many employees as they are allowed to have (given the store size), and right now the work is never-ending. > I would love to try this one day as long as the Benny Hill song can play in the background as I make trips from my van into a retail UPS store. Please don't do this, or even joke about it.
        pmiller2 6y ago
        Seriously. The UPS store I go to always has a line, usually extending out the door due to 6' distancing, and it probably would not literally hold 500 average-sized packages. I know it certainly would not hold 500 additional, average-sized packages.
        Consultant32452 6y ago
        The UPS store I go to sometimes has one other customer.
        ethbr0 6y ago
        Can I ship you a package to ship from your UPS store?
        Consultant32452 6y ago
        Sure bro, fedex it to me.
        irrational 6y ago
        This was my thought. I was just at a UPS store and there was nobody else there. I assume some are just busier than others.
        dsohn0 6y ago
        Jesus get off your high horse. What an asshole thing to say.
      - jjjjoe 6y ago
        I helped a friend pack and ship a successful Kickstarter campaign. The first time we showed up at the UPS store with a minivan full of boxes they made us set up an account. They had no interest in an "anonymous" transaction for more than a couple packages.
        Consultant32452 6y ago
        Don't be a slacker. You have to bring in one at a time. If they kick you out you gotta move on to the next UPS store.
    - Retric 6y ago
      FedEx would only pick up 110 Letterfolk packages per day ... Galbraith had a queue of 3,000 orders waiting to go out. There are 26 UPS stores in San Francisco for example. 10 packages at each location per person is hardly going to raise red flags. Use multiple people and add in FedEx and you could probably cover their 3k package backlog in one day. It's not going to cheap or scalable, but you can bet some people are going that route.
      - jjjjoe 6y ago
        I commented similarly elsewhere, but in my experience UPS won't ship more than one or two packages without an account. Red flags will definitely be raised if you try to smurf package shipments.
        Retric 6y ago
        Interesting, that's not been my experience.
  - SilasX 6y ago
    So ... this “limit” is really just a “limit on how much you can send with a discount”? Well, there goes the newsworthiness... Edit: Can someone please explain my error here? This comment [1] (as well as the immediately surrounding thread) indicates the limit applies to a business account that pays lower rates, and you have the unlimited right to ship on a non-business account that pays higher rates. Thus, the limit is really just a limit on the discounted rate. Which is equivalent to a price increase. Which is totally unsurprising and dog-bites-man for a case of high demand and difficulty increasing capacity. Thus, no longer newsworthy. So where's my error, really? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25348485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25348485
    - reificator 6y ago
      To start with, the business account is not only about paying a better rate. It's relevant for your internal accounting, taxes, etc... You can't just start handing out business credit cards to everyone you send to the store, the alternative is to ask employees to pay out of pocket and pinky swear to reimburse them. Then there's the question of liability. If your business account shipped something, any questions of liability are clear cut and easy to deal with. If a random employee shipped something, who's liable for any issues? And how about efficiency? Not only are you paying a reduced rate with a business account, but the provider comes and picks up your packages from you on a regular basis. If instead of putting things in the right place and answering the door when the UPS driver comes by, now you're paying however many employees to pick up a bunch of packages, drive over to the closest location, and wait in line. I don't know what the lines are like at UPS right now, but I do know that the USPS lines around me are about 45-60 minutes depending on the time of day. Not to mention that line starts outside in the cold. And that's all assuming your employee brings 20 packages to the clerk and has no problems shipping them all in the same transaction. Which means it's possible that your employee(s) didn't do their normal job, got frustrated and cold and risked infection standing in line instead, you paid a premium to do so, and some of your packages didn't get shipped regardless.
      - fennecfoxen 6y ago
        > the alternative is to ask employees to pay out of pocket and pinky swear to reimburse them. Uhh, fwiw, if you tell an employee you'll reimburse them for something they do for your business, it's got a little bit more heft in a court than a "pinky swear."
- shanecleveland 6y ago
  I believe they had been, and perhaps still are, charging per-shipment fees to "high-volume" shippers. And that is good in that it is leveling the charge on the culprit (the ones benefiting from e-commerce the most). Retail shippers already pay more and that wouldn't hit the source of the problem. And most shippers have contracts that may prevent sudden price increases based on volume (typically volume is rewarded).
- lumost 6y ago
  Throttling a spike using price forces everyone to pay the marginal rate, and to use price as a "good" throttle requires the logistics companies to have perfect knowledge of the demand/price curve. Given that shipping can be a significant price component for multiple types of e-commerce, transparency on when they can issue their final "get it by Christmas" sales with their standard/deterministic pricing structure.
  - sieabahlpark 6y ago
    > Throttling a spike using price forces everyone to pay the marginal rate, and to use price as a "good" throttle requires the logistics companies to have perfect knowledge of the demand/price curve. Not really, you just keep raising prices per day until it gets to the rate you want. If you want more packages lower the price. I have no idea why you think something that has been done since the foundation of capitalism is somehow completely foreign or impossible to compute or experiment with. Unlike in an economics class companies will never solve the two equations to perfectly maximize the profit, it's more of a range and they're hoping to get close enough. That's a much more realistic approach that has historically worked.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      High-volume shippers have contracts with carriers, often more than one year in length. Some of them are referenced to the retail rate. Many though are defined price (including surcharges) with annual escalations. Parcel carriers have been disrupted to some extent by Amazon building out their own logistics capability both line-haul and last-mile and have been signing contracts with non-Amazon shippers to ensure they could cover their costs and make a profit. Now, pandemic hits and drives a lot of unexpected, probably just this year, traffic into parcel shipping that would have otherwise been freight to stores and passenger car to homes and there's not enough capacity. There's not as much price shaping they can do without being in violation of their contract. In a lot of cases, they know they need these big shippers next year as well, so they can't entirely burn them this year even if they were willing to litigate the contract.
      - 6y ago
- bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
  The real answer is it’s politically incorrect to do that. Refusing service is cheaper than raising prices. Raising prices introduces all kinds of media and government scrutiny with unquantifiable downside. It’s the right thing to do but not the political thing to do.
- frogpelt 6y ago
  One reason may be that they are already at capacity for shipping and they simply cannot pick up any more packages.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by jgjr 6y ago

SilasX 6y ago

I hate to be the one to ask, but ... why can’t they throttle demand and increase capacity by raising prices?

Retric 6y ago
They did as everyone can just pay over the counter rates without issue, because you can ship anonymously.
- ghshephard 6y ago
  Nobody is shipping 500 packages/day over the counter.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    I would love to try this one day as long as the Benny Hill song can play in the background as I make trips from my van into a retail UPS store.
    - CaliforniaKarl 6y ago
      I have a friend who works in a UPS Store. He has been working 10+-hour days for the last two weeks, on top of a bicycle commute (which will sometimes turn into an hour-long walk if the winds are bad), picking up groceries, etc.. They have as many employees as they are allowed to have (given the store size), and right now the work is never-ending. > I would love to try this one day as long as the Benny Hill song can play in the background as I make trips from my van into a retail UPS store. Please don't do this, or even joke about it.
      - pmiller2 6y ago
        Seriously. The UPS store I go to always has a line, usually extending out the door due to 6' distancing, and it probably would not literally hold 500 average-sized packages. I know it certainly would not hold 500 additional, average-sized packages.
        Consultant32452 6y ago
        The UPS store I go to sometimes has one other customer.
        ethbr0 6y ago
        Can I ship you a package to ship from your UPS store?
        Consultant32452 6y ago
        Sure bro, fedex it to me.
        irrational 6y ago
        This was my thought. I was just at a UPS store and there was nobody else there. I assume some are just busier than others.
      - dsohn0 6y ago
        Jesus get off your high horse. What an asshole thing to say.
    - jjjjoe 6y ago
      I helped a friend pack and ship a successful Kickstarter campaign. The first time we showed up at the UPS store with a minivan full of boxes they made us set up an account. They had no interest in an "anonymous" transaction for more than a couple packages.
      - Consultant32452 6y ago
        Don't be a slacker. You have to bring in one at a time. If they kick you out you gotta move on to the next UPS store.
  - Retric 6y ago
    FedEx would only pick up 110 Letterfolk packages per day ... Galbraith had a queue of 3,000 orders waiting to go out. There are 26 UPS stores in San Francisco for example. 10 packages at each location per person is hardly going to raise red flags. Use multiple people and add in FedEx and you could probably cover their 3k package backlog in one day. It's not going to cheap or scalable, but you can bet some people are going that route.
    - jjjjoe 6y ago
      I commented similarly elsewhere, but in my experience UPS won't ship more than one or two packages without an account. Red flags will definitely be raised if you try to smurf package shipments.
      - Retric 6y ago
        Interesting, that's not been my experience.
- SilasX 6y ago
  So ... this “limit” is really just a “limit on how much you can send with a discount”? Well, there goes the newsworthiness... Edit: Can someone please explain my error here? This comment [1] (as well as the immediately surrounding thread) indicates the limit applies to a business account that pays lower rates, and you have the unlimited right to ship on a non-business account that pays higher rates. Thus, the limit is really just a limit on the discounted rate. Which is equivalent to a price increase. Which is totally unsurprising and dog-bites-man for a case of high demand and difficulty increasing capacity. Thus, no longer newsworthy. So where's my error, really? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25348485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25348485
  - reificator 6y ago
    To start with, the business account is not only about paying a better rate. It's relevant for your internal accounting, taxes, etc... You can't just start handing out business credit cards to everyone you send to the store, the alternative is to ask employees to pay out of pocket and pinky swear to reimburse them. Then there's the question of liability. If your business account shipped something, any questions of liability are clear cut and easy to deal with. If a random employee shipped something, who's liable for any issues? And how about efficiency? Not only are you paying a reduced rate with a business account, but the provider comes and picks up your packages from you on a regular basis. If instead of putting things in the right place and answering the door when the UPS driver comes by, now you're paying however many employees to pick up a bunch of packages, drive over to the closest location, and wait in line. I don't know what the lines are like at UPS right now, but I do know that the USPS lines around me are about 45-60 minutes depending on the time of day. Not to mention that line starts outside in the cold. And that's all assuming your employee brings 20 packages to the clerk and has no problems shipping them all in the same transaction. Which means it's possible that your employee(s) didn't do their normal job, got frustrated and cold and risked infection standing in line instead, you paid a premium to do so, and some of your packages didn't get shipped regardless.
    - fennecfoxen 6y ago
      > the alternative is to ask employees to pay out of pocket and pinky swear to reimburse them. Uhh, fwiw, if you tell an employee you'll reimburse them for something they do for your business, it's got a little bit more heft in a court than a "pinky swear."
shanecleveland 6y ago
I believe they had been, and perhaps still are, charging per-shipment fees to "high-volume" shippers. And that is good in that it is leveling the charge on the culprit (the ones benefiting from e-commerce the most). Retail shippers already pay more and that wouldn't hit the source of the problem. And most shippers have contracts that may prevent sudden price increases based on volume (typically volume is rewarded).
lumost 6y ago
Throttling a spike using price forces everyone to pay the marginal rate, and to use price as a "good" throttle requires the logistics companies to have perfect knowledge of the demand/price curve. Given that shipping can be a significant price component for multiple types of e-commerce, transparency on when they can issue their final "get it by Christmas" sales with their standard/deterministic pricing structure.
- sieabahlpark 6y ago
  > Throttling a spike using price forces everyone to pay the marginal rate, and to use price as a "good" throttle requires the logistics companies to have perfect knowledge of the demand/price curve. Not really, you just keep raising prices per day until it gets to the rate you want. If you want more packages lower the price. I have no idea why you think something that has been done since the foundation of capitalism is somehow completely foreign or impossible to compute or experiment with. Unlike in an economics class companies will never solve the two equations to perfectly maximize the profit, it's more of a range and they're hoping to get close enough. That's a much more realistic approach that has historically worked.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    High-volume shippers have contracts with carriers, often more than one year in length. Some of them are referenced to the retail rate. Many though are defined price (including surcharges) with annual escalations. Parcel carriers have been disrupted to some extent by Amazon building out their own logistics capability both line-haul and last-mile and have been signing contracts with non-Amazon shippers to ensure they could cover their costs and make a profit. Now, pandemic hits and drives a lot of unexpected, probably just this year, traffic into parcel shipping that would have otherwise been freight to stores and passenger car to homes and there's not enough capacity. There's not as much price shaping they can do without being in violation of their contract. In a lot of cases, they know they need these big shippers next year as well, so they can't entirely burn them this year even if they were willing to litigate the contract.
    - 6y ago
bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
The real answer is it’s politically incorrect to do that. Refusing service is cheaper than raising prices. Raising prices introduces all kinds of media and government scrutiny with unquantifiable downside. It’s the right thing to do but not the political thing to do.
frogpelt 6y ago
One reason may be that they are already at capacity for shipping and they simply cannot pick up any more packages.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]