Shipping Questions...place your questions and responses here.

[ohmay]

EKS has been asking questions about shipping via yahoo group and I thought this would be a better venue for the questions and answers.

Please place your questions and responses here so that the information is recorded and EKS can come back and read when needed.

Thanks

[ohmay]

Elaine of Grannyknits asked.....

hi knitters!

I live in the U.s. and have been shipping domestically.

I have to ship from home, since I have no car and live 7 miles from the P.O.

My question, for all you savvy business people............................
I've had some interest from Canada
(since there's a strike, I know that I can't ship there right now.)

How hard is it to ship US to Canada?
Do any of you just ship to a couple of countries?
(I'm not sure you can teach an old dog new tricks!)

thanks for any advice!!

Elaine
GrannysKnits
www.grannysknits.etsy.com

[ohmay]

my response....

Shipping international is something you need to go to the post office to do, if you ship First Class International (no tracking, no insurance). Paypal and the post office web site only offer the higher price rates for home services. Other than that it is a breeze. You will need to fill out a custom form when you take the package to mail. On the custom form you would mark the content as "other" and mark the price of the merchandise, less the shipping cost.

I only mail to UK, Canada and Australia, but have mailed to other countries upon request.

Even though Canada postal service is on strike, it seems to be a rotating strike where they hit different cities/locations to not deliver instead of stopping delivery everywhere. I mailed a package to Vancouver Island just as the strike started and she received the package yesterday.

[ennadoolf]

I would like to clarify that Canada Post employees are not on strike. The employees *were* on rotating strikes but as of June 15th they have been locked out by the corporation.

The good news is our mail is considered an essential service, so now our
government plans to step in to legislate the workers back to work.

It is correct that no mail is moving as of today, but it looks good that mail
will be moving again by next week (that's my best guess - I tend to be optimistic about these things).

So really it is only a week or so delay, and if you sell to Canadian buyers,
then by the time your items arrive at the border to come in to Canada, it may
only be delayed by a few days.

[Former_Member]

Is it better to offer FREE SHIPPING and higher products prices OR lower product prices PLUS shipping?

Either way, the total is about the same, but what is more important to customers?

[Former_Member]

I personally think that people see "Free shipping" and feel like they are getting a deal.

[Former_Member]

I think people like free shipping too, I do it on some yarns as a special and send good customers free shipping coupons.........

[Former_Member]

I like the idea of free shipping coupons for return customers but I disagree about free shipping because as I buyer I will assume the cost is built into the price of the item and I don't like that. It is hard to comparison shop.