Countries
Read only
Thank you, Amazon.
As you probably know, the USPS raised its rates this month, and the new Media Mail rates will take effect on Sunday, July 14. I fulfilled an order today (Saturday, July 13) and discovered - to my pleasant surprise - that I was able to use Amazon Buy Shipping and pay the old rate, in this case $ 4.13 for a 1 pound package, rather than the coming new rate of $ 4.63 for a 1 pound package. During previous USPS price hikes, Amazon Buy Shipping always implemented the new (higher) USPS rate on the Saturday prior to the Sunday of the actual price hike. This unfair practice was the subject of previous discussions in this Forum. It would appear that Amazon took the previous comments to heart and changed the implementation of the rate hike programming to the benefit of its sellers. So, thank you, Amazon.
PS: Could you now please turn your attention to the default shipping charged to buyers on books sold by individual plan sellers? It has been $ 3.99 per order for many, many years, during which the cost of USPS Media Mail (and all other USPS services) has roughly doubled. Perhaps an adjustment to $ 4.99 per order, or higher, would now be appropriate.
15 replies
Seller_kIukTwdhvntAp
" It has been $ 3.99 per order for many, many years, during which the cost of USPS Media Mail (and all other USPS services) has roughly doubled. Perhaps an adjustment to $ 4.99 per order, or higher, would now be appropriate."
Even if they raised it to $4.99 you would still lose money after Amazon takes their 15% (or whatever) fees and leaves you with $4.25.
Any change is not likely to happen because Amazon has been de-emphasizing and degrading books on the site for some time now -- probably a few years.
More and more book sellers are fleeing to other sites such as eBay that don't have the whitelisting by publishers and suspension issues that are encountered here.
If you can't/won't go to the Pro plan to set your own shipping, start looking for more attractive selling sites!
Seller_EGAYxdv2MmpO0
Amazon will likely leave it like this to encourage individual sellers to upgrade to the professional plan.
That being said, if seller does not have enough sales to justify making the move they probably aren't losing that much in postage.
Same as it ever was, adjust your pricing to make sure you don't lose money on shipping materials and postage. If you are selling books under $10, they better weigh 8 ounces or less for a chance of making a dollar.
Seller_sNpmfbRsQr05Y
Even piddly Alibris raised their credit to $4.49 some years ago. However, I can't imagine ANYONE at Amazon caring about this in the least, especially for sellers not on the professional plan. (I've been on that plan from the very beginning and our default rate is $4.99, with more added in to the book price per pound of weight.)
This rate increase STINKS but for us but NOT on Amazon since we use bound printed matter for 100% of our book shipments and have for many years w/o a single issue. That rate did not increase today, and starts at $3.87, going up just a little per pound.
In fact, I'm going to actually take a look at Veeqo since I believe they offer a BPM rate as well (our postal software company does not). Really didn't want to but may have no choice at $4.63 + .$75 a lb. for media mail for our non-Amazon orders.
TaylorR_Amazon
Happy to read this, @Seller_YwfR7hfAsgFmC! I will take down your feedback.
Seller_GQFPzQ31dyQYi
See the last sentence below in BOLD. So it's not Amazon keeping the old rates. It's the Post Offie.
======================================
New USPS® rates approved for July 14, 2024
The USPS mailing services price changes will take effect July 14, 2024. The new rates include a 5-cent increase in the price of a First-Class® Mail Forever stamp from 68¢ to 73¢. The approved adjustments raise mailing services product prices approximately 7.8%. There are no price changes for USPS retail or commercial prices for shipping services like Priority Mail® and Ground Advantage™
Similar Discussions
