Top-Rated eBay Seller Goes Postal
We've all heard the complaints and the jokes about the U.S. Postal Service and their employees. Word on the street is that your packages have a better chance of being lost or damaged than they do of actually arriving at their intended destination in a timely fashion fully intact. Then there is all the talk about the employees working in the post office. They're made out to be loose cannons just waiting to go on a shooting spree. In fact, the term "going postal" comes from many well-documented incidents of them doing just that in the past decade. And finally, I give to you the Seinfeld TV character, Newman, an overweight, disgruntled mailman who calls out sick every time it rains. The U.S. Post Office has more than just a black eye. It's been beat to a pulp.
Well, it's time to put an end to all this nonsense. Frankly, as an online seller, I don't know where I'd be without the U.S. Postal Service. Their bulk rate shipping program allows me to purchase and ship my old license plates at an unthinkably low price, and I get Priority Service, which provides delivery within 2 to 3 business days.
For example, a box of 50 license plates weighing 13 to 15 pounds can be shipped anywhere in the United States for as little as $10.20. In one of their standard flat rate envelopes, I can fit up to six license plates and ship them anywhere in the United States for only $4.75. This is crazy, especially when you consider that it costs $2.25 to $3.00 to mail a single license plate to the same locations using their First Class Mailing Rate.
As an added bonus, the flat rate packaging materials are free and the post office will come to my house to pick up all my packages. This is so important I'm going to repeat the first part of the last sentence: The flat rate packaging materials are free. No more begging the grocery store for their old boxes. And sorry, OfficeMax, I don't need to spend 50 a piece on your stupid large envelopes anymore. I get mine for free from the U.S. Post Office.
And you want to talk reliability. In the past three years, I've not had a single package lost by the Post Office. Between my website and eBay store, that's thousands of successful deliveries over a three year period, and I can count on my hand the few times my packages arrived damaged. Of course, I take extra care to make sure my products are securely packaged, but even so, I feel very comfortable with the Post Office's handling of my packages.
Now, with eBay's new online shipping program, anyone selling on eBay would be a fool, in my opinion, not to use the U.S. Postal Service. Every package is tracked for you, so in the rare cases when an item is lost, it usually can be found. Plus, we all know there are bad guys lurking on the internet, who will purchase an item and then claim it wasn't delivered. I've experienced this firsthand, and thanks to the tracking service, I was able to show proof of delivery. Good-bye, bad guy. Nice try.
Perhaps there was a time when the U.S. Post Office deserved the bad rap it's received from the general public, but this is a new era. If you're selling products on eBay, or anywhere else online, you need to visit USPS.com and check out their bulk rate shipping program. Neither rain, nor sleet or snow will prevent you from saving money when you go postal.
Posted on December 13, 2018
