tm9-801.com

A few days ago I am ready to place an order for some small electrical parts.. less than one pound and could fit in the palm of your had.

So I go to check out and the shipping calculator shows $13. Its one of those UPS calculators that magically figures out the shipping cost.



No way I spend $13 for shipping.

So I email the company (its not a large mega corp) and ask them to ship USPS in a flat rate $5 box.

You would of thought I asked them to drive it to my house personally. Excuse after excuse of how they can't accommodate shipping: they don't have boxes for shipping. My reply: USPS gives FREE boxes. And how do you ship UPS if you don't have boxes? They can't get to the Post Office. My reply: the USPS carrier will come to you. They can't spend time at the post office getting postage. My reply: Print the postage online. You have a scale because you ship UPS.

Bottom line I cancelled the order. They lost an order and I found the stuff from another surplus site.

I would have rather gotten a simple: NO, we don't offer USPS shipping rather than them blathering about how hard it is to use USPS. hahahahahaha fools.

Found a vendor would use the lower cost USPS Priority mail without any qualms.

So instead of paying almost $17 in shipping I was able to add another part (some electrical connectors) that put a few more dollars in THEIR pocket than in UPS's.

So lets see what I saved (or what the original vendor lost:

My order total was $54

	UPS	USPS
Shipping cost	$17	$5
Shipping time	5-7 days	2-3
Pkg Tracking	YES	YES
Delivered to my door	YES	YES

That's $12 in exta parts I was able to spend.. and put money in the vendors pocket.

Other vendor/seller not getting it:

$16.99 Standard Shipping
See all shipping details

For a 4ft wiring harness! Asked to ship USPS flat rate for $5.50 or I won't bid (its a wiring harness).

USPS is 2-3 from TX to PA.
UPS is 5 days TX to PA.

UPS is 3x the cost, plus you must supply the box and CHARGES YOU FOR PICKUP!
USPS gives you the box, DOES NOT CHARGE FOR PICKUP!

I'm not sure if its lazyness or what... but I remember when you would give customers a good VALUE for the money they are giving you. Now businesses are more than happy to let you waste money on shipping instead of their products.

When I ran my ISP we would send out FREE MODEMS to customers that were having connection issues because a $10 modem is a one time cost... a customer staying with my service would easily repay that in 2 months.

Even at the MV shows you don't get a discount.. I know a lot of people are my age with MVs and you would go to a show because you would get a 'show special' (and not just garbage pats that they couldn't give away) of 20% or more. Now they think that NOT charging you for shipping is good enough.

It's be nice to have an MV show require 15% off all items or they can't get a spot. Give people are REASON to show up.

Yeah.. I'll hold my breath while till that happens.