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A comment on No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers. Parent comment

Re:No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers by hinkley on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @03:39PM (#20813657)
And yet I've never had a reliability problem with USPS-shipped packages, whereas I've had so many problems with UPS that it's a joke among my friends that someone at UPS has a personal grudge against me. Lost packages, dented packages, me being home all day long and the doorbell never rings but there's a post-it on the door saying they couldn't deliver because nobody was home.

In theory USPS takes longer, but for me personally it's about the same time and a lot less of me getting upset at people. If USPS says Friday, I'm getting it on Friday. If UPS says Friday I'm getting it on Monday evening.

I miss when Amazon used to let you chose the shipper. That's been forever ago.

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Re:No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers by analog31 on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @07:52PM (#20815554)
USPS has been great for my tiny side-business. They are cheaper than anybody else for packages under a pound, and you can create a first class shipping label from within PayPal. This is cheaper than priority mail, and seldom if ever takes longer. I've simply never had a lost package, despite shipping a couple hundred units per year for almost a decade.

On the receiving end, I like USPS because I can have my mail held when I'm on a trip -- the process is totally painless.

Now, who knows if my shipping is being subsidized. Probably, when one considers subsidies to transportation infrastructure. But I suspect that if we lose USPS, whatever money the government saves will be more than made up by having to bail out one or more of the private shipping services every few years, like other "too big to fail" industries.

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Re:No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers by kuzimoto on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @08:52PM (#20815904)
In addition, if you're shipping smaller heavy items, you can get free shipping supplies like padded envelope and boxes for flat rate shipping which can be a better rate in some cases.
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