Online Merchants Face Higher UPS Rates in 2015

[iwiw60]

Online Merchants Face Higher UPS Rates in 2015
By Ina Steiner
EcommerceBytes.com
October 22, 2014




As with the certainty of death and taxes, online merchants can count on shipping costs to rise each year, even as consumers increasingly expect to receive free shipping.

Like clockwork, UPS is raising rates for 2015, and sellers who use the shipping carrier will see rates rise by an average of 4.9 percent. That's on top of UPS's previously announced plan to add dim weight pricing next year, which will also raise the cost of certain packages.

UPS released its new rates for 2015 this week. "UPS Ground, Air, International, UPS Freight, and UPS air freight rates within and between the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico will increase an average of 4.9 percent," according to the announcement.

In June, UPS announced it would apply dimensional weight pricing to all UPS Ground services and UPS Standard to Canada packages. That news followed rival FedEx's announcement that it would do the same for its ground service.

The US Postal Service is capitalizing on the fact that its two competitors are switching to Dim Weight pricing through an ad campaign it began running over the summer.

UPS rate changes take effect on December 29, 2014, and the carrier said customers can download the 2015 UPS Rate and Service Guide on that date.

[rokins_toys]

Royal Mail switched to dim weight and prices rocketed for small low priced items. Royal Mail purposely made it so small boxes like 12x9x9 and 12x9x6 inches were classed as medium parcels rather than the small parcels they actually are. In hindsight Royal Mail made changes very quickly when they saw how much business they lost as a result of their unfair and extremely restrictive dimensions for small parcels and now allow an assortment of sizes to be sent as small parcels. Let's just hope UPS do not make the same mistake