Shipping framed print

[f/stopblues]

So, a simple question here..

Why does it cost $10-15 to ship a frame (in the 28x28" range) to me from Frame Destination, but if I add a print and use the same box to ship, then all of the sudden my shipping cost is like $75 to New York? Both use FedEx ground, weight and dimensions are nearly identical, and distance is longer, but not THAT far.

What am I missing? Is there a better solution?

 

[Jon Shiu]

Check USPS Parcel Post service.

Jon

 

[fdi]

Without knowing more details I cant fully explain it, but as an owner of Frame Destination I can provide some additional info. As a company that ships a lot of product we get pretty good discounts with Fedex. The price our website charges you is not the actual shipping cost. Even though we get large volume discounts with Fedex which allow us to lower our shipping charges, we still have to pay Fedex 10%-15% more than our website charges. We also have to pay for the boxes, packing material, and the salary and benefits of our shipping employees. In other words, we lose a lot of money on shipping.

Now $75 seems kind of high unless you are shipping to HI or Alaska or you are paying another company to pack and ship the box. Another possibility is that your box hit the oversize fee which is an extra $50. Our website tries to charge that when it can but sometimes it misses it since it is hard to determine the size of the box a custom size frame designed on the website will be shipped in. Our packers try to get the box just inside oversize rules but we are training someone new and they may have packed it in an oversize box by mistake, or you may have made the box a little larger.

Even if you do not ship very much, if you open an account with Fedex you can get better shipping rates. Tell them you are shipping for business, that hope to grow and ask for as large a discount as possible. Depending on the size of the box USPS might be better or worse. Fedex and UPS use what is called dimensional weight. There is a formula that takes the size of the box and converts it to a number they will use for weight. You get to pay the cost for which ever weight is greater, the actual weight or the shipping weight. Picture frames and up in large mostly empty boxes and so they mostly get charged for dimensional weight. For example, we will ship a frame that may actually weight 7 pounds but the dim weight is 25 lbs so we have to pay the cost to ship 25 lbs. I don't recall if USPS uses dim weight but they do have various size fees.

Our cost is lower with Fedex since we have good discounts and USPS does not have decent package tracking or customer service so we almost never use them.

If you private message me your order number and the new destination for your package I can tell you more.

Cheers,
Mark

So, a simple question here..

Why does it cost $10-15 to ship a frame (in the 28x28" range) to me from Frame Destination, but if I add a print and use the same box to ship, then all of the sudden my shipping cost is like $75 to New York? Both use FedEx ground, weight and dimensions are nearly identical, and distance is longer, but not THAT far.

What am I missing? Is there a better solution?

 

[f/stopblues]

That's really helpful information, Mark.. thank you. So far I have just put ballpark numbers into the FedEx site to anticipate my shipping cost. A couple months back I did this same thing and got bit big time, and this next shipment is going to be slightly larger. I should be ordering my frame in the next week or so and I can get some more specific info then.

Thanks again for your help. I've had such a great experience with Frame Destination! My orders have been perfect every single time and I wouldn't even consider using anyone else.

 

[fdi]

That's really helpful information, Mark.. thank you. So far I have just put ballpark numbers into the FedEx site to anticipate my shipping cost. A couple months back I did this same thing and got bit big time, and this next shipment is going to be slightly larger. I should be ordering my frame in the next week or so and I can get some more specific info then.

Thanks again for your help. I've had such a great experience with Frame Destination! My orders have been perfect every single time and I wouldn't even consider using anyone else.

Thanks! I wish our error rate was zero...but if you do ever have a problem just let us know and we will fix it.

Cheers,
Mark