Help determining highest possible shipping cost on Fed Ex

[erikaja7]

I’m new to selling on Ebay. I live in New York, and I remember reading that I should enter a California zip code to determine the highest cost I might have to pay for shipping an item within the United States. I just sold an item to someone who lives in Pennsylvania. Shipping the item to Pennsylvania (Fed Ex) ended up costing MORE than it would have if I had to ship the same item to California! 

I’m so confused. Would someone please explain to me how this could have happened (and more importantly what I can do to avoid making shipping cost mistakes like this in the future).  Thanks so much.

[richard1rst]

We would need much more information to help.

FedEx offers many different services - from overnight to ground with many in between.

What service did you quote to California, what service did you select for Pennsylvania.

How big and how heavy was the package? Are you sure you used the same service, size and weight for both quotes? FedEx quotes are based more on size than by weight.

[pooh333piglet]

That is pretty much impossible for it to cost more to PA than CA. Only way I can think of is if the buyer is rural residential in PA so you get 2 extra charges vs a CA buyer who may have you shipping it to a business address (so no addition as l charges). That is if using ground. Theres also issue where smartpost often costs more than ground so we would need to know what these choices were and entered in The listing