Email a copy of 'Do NOT Use USPS Calculator for Parcel DIM Weight Estimates' to a friend
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Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.
Ok Ina.. Let’s get this all figured out.. I still haven’t printed the shipping label headed to OK City.. So what your telling me is I can offer my customer a cheaper shipping option (sometimes) with Retail Ground but I have to walk over to the post office. That’s fine. I’ll evaluate every large listing. But I’m wondering why none of my customers choose FedEx (once this year) when offered at a cheaper price. I still ship stuff FedEx when it’s cheaper anyway, but in the instance I posted on EKG the Retail Ground price was actually cheaper.. It’s red tape and it’s annoying. What eBay could do is just simply create code to offer the customer the best price slow mail or priority based on the packaging calculations for USPS.
The best way to thwart inaccuracies in calculated shipping when it comes to DIM weight pricing is to simply enter the number of pounds you’re being charged for. Take the example given in the article, 10x10x20 at 5 pounds, the DIM weight pricing would be for 13 pounds (10x10x20 / 166 = 12.05). So, instead of entering package dimensions, just enter 13 pounds for the weight.
This is what I do on sites that don’t have the option of entering package dimensions and it has always been accurate. If you’re required to enter package dimensions, you could just enter the dimensions for a smaller box that doesn’t require DIM weight pricing.