Endicia Customers Take Advantage of the new USPS Parcel Select Shipping Service
Beginning January 2010, the United States Post office began offering a new service class called “Parcel Select”. The new Parcel Select service was created for medium to large size companies who were looking for an affordable ground service. For small companies who want to take advantage of the cost savings, the US Postal service provides a list of Shipping Consolidators such as APO Box, DHL Global Mail, FedEx SmartPost, Mystic Logistics, Puerto Rico DDu Plus Inc, and UPS Mail Innovations.
eCommerce shippers who currently use Endicia for their postage needs can take advantage of the cheaper Parcel Select postal rates. The Endicia Price Change information gives more detail about the cost savings. Essentially, there is only a little savings in the postal cost (about 3 cents) but packages shipped via parcel select are given delivery confirmation for free. I ran a label for a 10 pound package today and the price difference between a 10-lb parcel post package with delivery confirmation and a 10-lb parcel select package with delivery confirmation was 22 cents. Now, while that is not an earth-shattering amount of savings for one package, if you ship about 100 packages a week via Parcel Select rather than Parcel Post you could save about $100 dollars in a 4 1/2 week period (a month).
The margins from eCommerce sales have shrunk considerably in the last decade so there is little room left for sellers to absorb increased costs. It’s a great idea for eCommerce merchants to start 2010 out by reviewing all costs, especially shipping costs, to determine if there is any way to keep overall expenses from increasing. My prediction is that cost savings will be the best bottom line for success in 2010 since many merchants do not realistically have the option of passing along increased costs to online shoppers at this time.
I use Endicia and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IT!
However, I still am not sure what the difference is between Parcel Post and Parcel Post Select. How long does each one of them take to arrive? Is one faster then the other?
Thanks
Rosie
BTW-These packages can always be tracked when using Endicia!
Rosalie A. Gonzalez
June 2, 2010
The time in transit for parcel post and parcel post select is the same. Delivery confirmation is OPTIONAL for parcel post but is included in the base price for parcel post select. Thus, if you want to ship parcel post with delivery confirmation, then parcel post select is the cheaper option for the exact same service.
thebrewsnews
June 5, 2010