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One
of the most common questions I get asked is about shipping, and what
shipping company I use. Shipping is one of the most important
aspects of running an ebay business, which can either make you a
success or drive you into the whole with losses. There is no simple
answer to the question of shipping, but I will try to give you some
guidelines and what to look for.
In Canada you effectively have 2
different types of shipping available. The first is through Canada
post, and the second is through a courier company such as UPS, Fedex,
or Purolator. Each has its own advantages and drawbacks, which we
will touch on in this article.
We will start by looking at
Canada post and the services they provide. In general Canada post is
one of the cheapest ways to ship an item anywhere in the world. They
provide a number of different shipping options based on speed of
delivery. For the ebay seller the most common option would be the
Expedited parcel shipping, and provides a delivery time of
approximately 3 to 7 days within Canada and about 10 days to the
USA. Another important option with this service is that you can
insure your package for up to $1000. Unfortunately you are
restricted by the 30 kg weight limit. If you are shipping small
items to the USA with a weight less than 1 kg then there is a
special category called small packet shipping available,
unfortunately on this service you are restricted to a $100 insurance
value, and has roughly the same transit time as the expedited
parcel. Also unfortunately there is no small packet rate for
shipping within Canada. This is a very frustrating situation, since
it can mean that for small lightweight items it is far more
expensive to ship it within Canada than to send it anywhere else in
the USA or the world. Most Canadian customers do not realize this
and it needs to be explained to them. If your items need to be
delivered within a faster time frame then Canada Post also offers a
service called Xpresspost. Although it has a much faster delivery
time, it is also about twice as expensive as the expedited parcel.
Generally I have found that the Xpresspost service is generally not
worth the extra expense it costs, and there is really no guarantee
that the package will arrive there any faster.
When shipping elsewhere in the
world Canada post offers both surface and air parcel services. The
expected transit time for a surface parcel can be up to 6 to 8
weeks, and the air parcel is about 10-14 days. However the air
service is about two to three times the cost of the surface service,
and effectively there is no guarantee that it will be any faster. We
have found that the surface parcel is still the best way to ship,
but you must inform your customer about the 6 to 8 weeks expected
transit times. Again for small lightweight packages (under 2 kg)
there is a special small packet rate, for either surface or air
shipping. These small packet rates are actually a very cost
effective form of shipping. Canada post also offers the Xpresspost
service for overseas shipping. And as you would expect it is a very
pricey way to ship, but it is the quickest service they have. There
are also additional weight and size restrictions when sending to
certain overseas countries.
In general, courier services
such as UPS and Fedex tend to be much faster than the postal
services but they are also quite expensive. Also these forms of
shipping generally require much more documentation to be filled out.
In general the only advantage that we have found with couriers is
that they have a much higher weight and size limit on the packages
they will ship. For example UPS has a 150 lb limit for its packages.
Couriers will also sometimes allow you to ship a package freight
collect. This is where you ship the package to the customer without
paying for the shipping upfront. The customer is charged the actual
shipping cost by the courier when the package is received. This
sounds like a great way to ship but it does have its drawbacks. In
rare cases the package is delivered and the charges are not
collected (or the customer refuses to pay the charges). Then the
shipping company will come after you the shipper for the cost of the
shipping, and you have effectively no recourse.
In
general we have found that courier shipping is only useful for large
heavyweight items that cannot be sent through the postal services.
For us the shipper of choice for all destinations is the Canadian
postal service. On a side note, as some of you have found out, we
still do not have our web site up and running. The typical problem
is that things take twice as long as one would expect, especially
during the summer. Our new revised web site launch date is the end
of September. Please stay tuned and happy selling to all.
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