Shipping alternative

[bontopcz0]

Does anyone use an alternate like Shippo versus ebay as their shipping vendor? (Currently I ship only domestically and primarily use USPS for items less than 5#. )

I am looking for ways to mitigate these upcoming usps increases. For the record, I totally get ebay is in it for the money. I presume they are just offering to us a portion of the discounts they receive from USPS, UPS, FedEx as the negotiated discounts from my corporate life are far more than what ebay provides as our discount. 

Thoughts? Suggestions?

[nobody*s_perfect]

Do you have any evidence that Shippo offers any better prices than eBay?

[bontopcz0]

No I haven't dug into it yet. I am operating from the perspective that ebay extends just a portion of the negotiated rates to us (versus a full pass-through) and that other shipping vendors may offer deeper discounts.

[nobody*s_perfect]

For USPS, shipping vendors generally charge the regular online rate, known as the "Commercial" rate, when you look it up in the official USPS rates publication, Notice 123:

http://pe.usps.com/cpim/ftp/manuals/dmm300/notice123.pdf

eBay Top Rated Sellers get a further 3% discount on the prices for Priority Mail, which supports your suspicion that eBay is getting a better discount.

[popblox]

In my experience, there is no better shipping rate available off eBay. I'm sure there are exceptions, but it seems as though the only way to counter shipping cost increases is to find more lightweight items to sell and/or find ways to decrease the packaging weight of current items.

[d-k_treasures]

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@popblox wrote:

In my experience, there is no better shipping rate available off eBay. I'm sure there are exceptions, but it seems as though the only way to counter shipping cost increases is to find more lightweight items to sell and/or find ways to decrease the packaging weight of current items.

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Pirateship is a good one, and you can use cubic rates.

Shippo will give you great rates, provided you have the volume. A lot of volume.