At least in the case of UPS "stores", they have zero connection to the actual UPS corporation. They simply rent the UPS name.
Rockauto Shipping cost
- Thread starter RWDVOLVO
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Did you have to pay brokerage fee, used to be at least $40 or so. If not then you got lucky, FedEx and UPS always added that fee on international shipments to Canada. So, if you paid only US$25 for shipping to your door then that was cheap.
Rock Auto shipping most def gone up.
I was shopping pads and rotors for the Mazda. Shipping was $55.98 for front & rear. Order front & rear separately shipping is $18.99 & $15.99. I noticed same thing on drums and rotors for the Tempest. If I added rotors to the drums order I just placed, shipping would have been about $55. Seems shippers want premium for heavy orders.
UPS stores are the remnants of the Mail Boxes Etc. stores in North America after it went bankrupt. MBE still exists elsewhere under different ownership.
UPS became the franchisor and rebranded the stores with their own name.
But they might as well be rebranded again, to "Amazon Returns Collection Store" based on the traffic I've seen. 80% of their business my closest branch seems to be acting as Amazon's customer service counter. Post-holidays, the space resembles a hoarder's dream, piled with Amazon returns.
Conversely, after Kinko's was acquired by FedEx, their name was expunged only after the second rebranding, to simply FedEx Office, which are all corporate-owned.
On the whole, I've had better experiences at the UPS stores.
Amazon told its sellers last fall it was ending the commingling program, at the end of March. Before, sellers could avoid it by paying extra fees to reserve their own space.
Now, it needs to address its returns processing to do more than just slap an LPN sticker on the box, or throw it in a plastic bag, before resending the item to the next buyer as new.
The UPS store near my work seems to have a good mix of business. We actually use them for printing sales or promotional literature. The owner (Deb) and I know each other by name and I know their print/layout girl (Jodi) by name as well. They do a good amount of actual UPS shipments too. Amazon returns ? Yeap, plenty of those too and I asked Deb about it, if it's too hectic or disruptive and she said "it pays really well". I mean, they could set up a line and a dedicated person to handle these and the time per transaction is really less than 30 seconds.
I checked the shipping cost on a set of four Bilstein shocks into Canada and it was just over $50 US. That is good enough to be competitive with auto stores up here.
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Last week I ordered a front brake kit (PowerStop 2 rotors and pads) for my 2018 Equinox and shipping was $8.99 to MN. With a $7.99 discount code the order came to $174.35. The cheapest from local parts stores (Napa, Autozone, etc) was well over $200. I have no idea how FedEx can ship such a heavy box for $8.99
Ex wife got a giant door stop in a box once from her office supply budget, she refused to open it in the office and they were curious of what that was.
Nice. I was avoiding Amazon a lot because I can get fake stuff despite buying from genuine seller.
This past week I had a couple ~$30 items overnighted at a cost of an additional ~$30. These were items that were either unavailable through local B&M or still cheaper this way. In the grand scheme of an invoice $30 in shipping isn't necessarily that much.
The downside is that you simply cannot rely on overnight to be overnight. Plan on 2-day (or even 3) and hope for overnight.
My only pet peeve with shipping is that if they fail to get it overnight, they should refund some. Otherwise the mere possibility of abuse is too great: what's to stop a carrier from collecting overnight fees but NEVER having any intention of meeting that obligation? Answer: loss of income.
The downside is that you simply cannot rely on overnight to be overnight. Plan on 2-day (or even 3) and hope for overnight.
My only pet peeve with shipping is that if they fail to get it overnight, they should refund some. Otherwise the mere possibility of abuse is too great: what's to stop a carrier from collecting overnight fees but NEVER having any intention of meeting that obligation? Answer: loss of income.
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