So if I am ordering something across the ocean, compared to me sending something to a friend across the ocean, I pay more than 5 times more for sending a package than just ordering something from the same place, and it’s always like that. Do businesses get some special deal or something?
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Almost every part of the process that you’re paying for, except the fuel, doesn’t scale with the size of your package. If I ship a pallet or a single smallbox, almost all the steps are the same. But a pallet might contain 10 or 100 or 1000 items. All the cost for the paperwork, scheduling, tracking, people, etc. is spread across all those items.
If you have just 1 item, you have to carry that entire cost on your one item.
Taking it even farther, suppose I have one 100 lbs box that costs $100 to ship. If that box contains your one thing, it’s going to cost $100 to ship. If it contains 200 0.5 lbs items it’s *exactly the same* to the shipping company but it only costs $0.50 per item.
You are sending one package. Amazon is sending hundreds of truckloads of packages.
Any shipping company can afford to lose you as a customer. No shipping company can afford to lose Amazon as a customer.
Business get discounts because they ship large volumes and also they will include a portion in the purchase price because even though you may not see a shipping charge there is no such service as *free shipping*.
Businesses tend to ship in bulk. Even things like Amazon or Alibaba, which appear to be shipping just one item to you, are usually placing bulk shipping orders (if they don’t have a standing contract with the shipping company) to send your package and the other 10,000 items that are ordered from one continent to another.
Each country is able to set prices for shipping material from one place to another within their own borders, but when it comes to setting prices for shipping material from one country to another, those rates are set by the Universal Postal Union.
The UPU designates some countries as “target” (developed), “new target” (semi-developed), and “transitional” (less developed). Shipping sent from “transitional” countries to “target” countries costs less than shipping from “target” countries to “transitional” countries. There are over 100 “transitional” countries, and about 40 “target” and 40 “new target” countries, but since the target countries tend to send more mail, it balances out, and the excess charged in target country postal fees allows “transitional” countries to send mail for less than the cost of delivery.
There is some controversy over this, as some of the countries designated as “transitional” like China, Brazil, Russia, and India have GDP comparable to the countries designated as “target” like the United States, Germany, and Japan.
Thus it’s cheaper to send a package from China to the United States than it is to ship that same package from the United States to China, or from New York to Connecticut for that matter.
Businesses get insane discounts (like 80%+ off) because they ship such great volume. You? Pay full price.
Every online retailer has a different cost structure. Mostly it depends on the country’s import-export policies and the taxes they applied are different depending on the country’s policies. As some companies also provide free shipping like **PrintingShell.**
It depends on the products you order as some shipments charge according to weight and some just keep in mind that how much space the product take So that’s why shipping cost varies. Mostly internationally it depends on the product size and it cost more if the size is bigger.
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