I am just wondering about shipping costs for a single purchase of [small item]. I am more than happy to pay for shipping and packaging costs, but it seems that $7.50 is a bit much for [small item]. Do you adjust if actual cost is much less or is this a set amount?
The cheapest service we use with NZ Post is the PCB5C5 service which costs $5.50 each package.
For each order, regardless of how small, we have a bank fee to receive the deposit, and the same amount of admin involved to check off the deposit, print out the paperwork we are required to by the IRD to print out and store. This is why there is a processing fee of $2 on all orders. We pass this cost on per order and keep the per unit cost down.
Overall this policy delivers a much better per unit price to customers and allows customers to manage cost by choosing to order efficiently - ie get everything in one go instead of several smaller orders.
Why don't you use one of the many cheaper postage options NZ Post offers, e.g. a 90 cent stamped envelope?
We find a lot of smaller packaged items got lost in the post and the cost of lodging a claim with NZ Post in labour time was more than the claim itself. Of course customers expect replacements when orders go missing and we ended up losing a lot of money having to re-ship lost orders. Also with envelopes and packet post there is no tracking option making this further complicated.
The issue is not that NZ Post would not honour every claim, but that the cost in labour to lodge and follow through a claim was more than the claim itself.
The decision we have made is that we will not send an item out in a small package, and each order will be placed in a carton and padded out to the PCB5C5 size restrictions as we were finding this sized order, or larger, never got lost. The added benefit with the post products we now use is that they are all a traceable service.
The net result is that we have not had one item lost since we implemented the policy in April 2008. The policy is passing on cost fairly and is the cheapest option for customers with no hidden costs resulting from missing or damaged deliveries.
As a customer you can feel assured that we have worked towards systems and processes that have resulted in zero lost or damaged orders and that you can order assured that you are more likely to get your order on time, not damaged and not have the risk of issues with having to lodge a claim with Greenbeans.
Why don't you use plastic pre-paid courier packs?
1- We tried this method for a period of time, but had a number of customer complain that little rips formed in the pack during transit and they had big brown marks on their fabric, and as above it is not the fact that claims were never honoured, it was simply never worth it.
2- It is very difficult to set limits on every product we sell to be fair on people who put in large orders for the postage to be accurate (not overinflated), but at the same time allowing a customer to order product that we could easily pack into a track pack for the postage to be accurately calculated and that we end up being able to pack the said order within the restrictions of the package easily.
3- The cost is not a lot cheaper. Our cheapest Postal service we use is $5.50 + a $2 processing fee. If we offered Track Packs, it would still be the cost of the service plus the $2 processing fee.
4- NZ Post is the only postal/courier service in NZ that does not charge extra for RD delivery. Every other service provider charges for RD delivery, either requiring a RD ticket to be applied and charges you the RD costs plus $20 processing costs per each time you fail to apply the appropriate RD ticket to RD items, to other providers that simply send you a bill at the end of the month with you having to take their word that all those items were RD deliveries. When we have used track packs in the past, a large % of our orders were classed as being an RD address and had the never ending issues needing RD to be added.