USPS Ground Advantage

[kmmcrafts]

I've known that USPS was going to start doing a " Ground Advantage" class of mailing.. I guess I didn't think it was going to affect me because I always use First Class.. I never read into it since I've been so busy this summer with helping two of my kids buying houses and helping them remodel etc.. along with taking care of brother in laws house while he has been ill. 

Anyway, the last few orders I've noticed that there was no option for First Class so I took a quick minute to look up what happen to first class mail. It seems as though they didn't add a new class of mail but removed one and replaced it with "Ground Advantage" which is supposed to be the cheaper way to mail.. What little I took time to read on it is that it seems they have went from "Air Transport" to Ground transport and just a excuse to take longer to make the deliveries.. I can see how that makes more sense for them than having "first class" since it was much cheaper.. BUT was typically just as fast as Priority.. My understanding for First Class was it went air delivery but was secondary to priority.. so if a flight was full with priority then the First Class waited until the next flight.. Most times it was delivered just as fast as Priority.. Probably hoping more people will switch to the actual Priority for quicker mailing. Most priority mail prices start at $7-8 where as First Class was always just under $4.. Now if a customer wants it fast they have to pay double the cost for the Priority, LOL..  Now with these cost changes.. FedEx and UPS might actually be cheaper to ship IF customer wants it faster than the Ground Advantage. Something I'm going to have to look into I guess at some point. 

[Scrappile]

I saw that the other day when I was pricing some wood.  I had the choice of Ground Advantage or UPS.  UPS ground turned out to be around $8 cheaper.  Don't know it that is always the case but it was for my order.  

[kmmcrafts]

Well the last few orders that I sent via priority mail was about $2 or better cheaper than what it normally would have been before this change. So best I can tell is they raised the price of what once was first class and lowered priority maybe? So far that’s what I’m seeing. That last few priority mail orders was only $6.** and I’ve never been able to Mail priority for less that $8 

[kmmcrafts]

So what I'm finding with this Ground Advantage is that it is insured up to $100. It's a 2-5 day delivery timeframe which I think is what the First Class was as well, however most times for me First Class was delivered 3-4 days mostly just as fast as the Priority. 

Amazon still has First Class mail option and the post office said they're accepting it for now but there will be a cut off time that they're not going to accept it from Amazon. Amazon is a big company but I've mentioned in the past how they're terrible with how they run their website. Hopefully they'll get their site updated for this Ground Advantage soon since they push their sellers to use their labels or if there is a dispute they'll wipe their hands free if you ship outside of Amazon but they'll stand behind you so long as you print your label through them. LOL 

[BadBob]

22 hours ago, kmmcrafts said:

So what I'm finding with this Ground Advantage is that it is insured up to $100.

I noticed that when I shipped a package a couple of days ago. In the past, I have shipped almost everything with no insurance figuring that if I had to replace something, it would be cheaper than paying the insurance. So far, I have not had a single package get lost or broken. The only packages that had insurance were sent priority mail.

 

[kmmcrafts]

58 minutes ago, BadBob said:

I noticed that when I shipped a package a couple of days ago. In the past, I have shipped almost everything with no insurance figuring that if I had to replace something, it would be cheaper than paying the insurance. So far, I have not had a single package get lost or broken. The only packages that had insurance were sent priority mail.

 

Yes that's how I always done the insurance as well. In 15 years of mailing crafts and another 10 in mailing various car / tractor parts etc. I've had about 5 damaged or missing items... most of that was parts things before the crafts selling and probably more to do with how I packaged them, LOL.. Everyone learns somewhere that they're not careful with the packages.. even if marked fragile.. package it like they're going to play football with it, LOL

[BadBob]

54 minutes ago, kmmcrafts said:

package it like they're going to play football with it

That is what I do. I shake the package hard, and it gets more padding if anything moves.

A customer sent me a photo of a package with a tire track on it. The contents were fine.