Thread: Advice on International Shipping with USPS

Hi,

My website ships internationally using real time rates, and the preferred carrier for international (due to price) is USPS.

We have been sending lot of packages with the USPS Small Flat Rate Box Priority Mail and also First Class Mail International.

The two problems I have is that people obviously are selecting those shipping methods because they are cheapest. However, the problem we have is that they are not trackable internationally and we get emails everyday from customers that have waited 2+ weeks and still can not even track the package.

Another issue is that many times, the customer selects products that either do not fit inside the small flat rate box because the product is too large, or they ordered a few products that together do not fit in the small flat rate box.

I believe that I am getting more international orders because of the low shipping cost with these methods, but its a problem for us to get emails from frustrated customers who don't know where in the world their order might be, or that instead of the shipping charge being $10, we have to call them that it's $40 because it's too large for the small flat rate box.

What should I do?

Do I prevent those 2 methods? and then lose sales? and have them select only priority or express mail?

Do I make a disclaimer or an explanation about the methods being non-trackable? is that possible to do in the real time rate section?

Also, the USPS shipping method names are very vague and not user friendly at all. International customers can not tell the difference between Express and Priority (both sound quick to me) Being that it shows them UPS rates and USPS rates, it is showing ALOT of methods which are confusing.



Anyone deal with this issue too?

Suggestions?

Thank you!

We have the same problem with First Class International and upset customers. We removed this service from the options last month. I think we will use the "RequireTermsAndConditionsAtCheckout " or some other way to warn them. Maybe there's a way to add text to the First Class R/T return that the customer sees? Like First Class International (Deliver Within 30 days)? 60 days ?

We removed all flat rate methods also and offer just Priority International and EMS, You really can't lose this way, those little losses add up over the year.
This way if you get an order and it will fit into a flat rate, you just made a few on shipping. Most of us don't calculate shipping supplies, labor, etc. into our product prices anyway, so that helps. If it's a substantial difference in price, like they pay 90 for Priority and I can ship for 25, we do adjust the order total or credit back, that always makes people happy.

Our international customers (Brazil in this case) are seeing USPS International Priority rates ($29.78) that are more than twice what the actual rate for an International Priority small flat rate box is ($13.25 from stamps.com or USPS' web site). $3 of the $29.78 is a handling fee which aren't calculated in the stamps.com rate but that is still a $12.83 disparity. The dimensions and weight for the product they put in their shopping cart are both under the dimension and weight thresholds for the small flat rate box. It's as if the real-time rate is calculated for a Medium or Large box.

Does anyone know how I can get to the root cause of this problem? I don't want to have to manually process orders or create a coupon code to subtract the overage. I just want the real-time rate to be, you know, an accurate real-time rate.

Thanks

Have you added USPS Priority International Mail [or whatever the official name is] to RTShipping.ShippingMethodsToPrevent? Assuming you want priority flat rate and the package's size is not a problem, I'd think this would eliminate your problem with the higher rate being proferred.

As of now, international shipping to my location makes any new shirts very expensive, thus I will not be buying anytime soon until some sort of better www.parcelbound.com becomes available.