April 20th Update to Shipping Prices on CardShark.com

Greetings all,

It's been a long time since we have blogged about anything, but this one is major and we wanted to take a chance to communicate some big changes to shipping prices at CardShark.com this week.

The USPS has once again announced some huge increases while trying to pretend they are only increasing by a few pennies. New USPS Rates affective April 17, 2011. Sadly if mail is classified as rigid/non-uniform it is technically treated as a parcel. The last big increase brought this distinction and saw a massive increase to prices. This time around the USPS has combined the first 3 ounces of parcels and raised the rate by almost $.50

They have also finally gotten around to significantly raising international rates as well to be more in-line with domestic parcel increases. Our international users will note a small increase on small order sizes, but may notice a slight decrease on larger orders as we fine tuned some of the shipping prices to be in-line with current prices. Check out the new Buyer shipping prices.

How will this affect the single card buyer?
We had to increase the 1-3 card rate to $2.75 shipping. The 4-15 card rate has increased to $3.50. After that it evens out pretty much with no real increases.

We try as much as we can to keep our 1-3 card rate as low as possible, but with these huge increases it is very difficult to make this an affordable option. Some suggestions for our price conscious buyers are to try to purchase more cards from a single seller or to combine your orders into as few sellers as possible to help save on shipping charges.

How will this affect Sellers?

We have tried to maintain the same (adjusted) seller shipping allowances where possible. Sellers will notice they have extra materials costs in their international orders. The toughest part is the 1-3 card domestic orders. The materials costs is very low here and we expect sellers to be extra efficient in their packaging materials. As orders move into the 4-15 card range they will find a lot more flexibility in the materials costs.

As a company we have to support the lowest common denominator in shipping prices. Almost any rigid/non-uniform piece of mail could be classified as a parcel. Also using a bubble mailer will almost certainly get you classified as a parcel. Due to this and the heavy use of bubble mailers by many of our shippers we need to support parcel prices as the default. Some of our more clever shippers are still welcome to try to use letter sized envelopes with top loaders and pay non machinable surcharges which can yield a tidy profit on your shipping allowance or provide more money towards materials.

Check out the new Seller shipping allowances.

Insurance

Insurance rates have gone up $.05 to $.10 across the board and these prices have been adjusted accordingly on the site.

Please comment on any suggestions for improved shipping policies or feelings about the recent USPS postal increases and thanks for your continued support of CardShark!