Anyone here ever use rubber electrical tape?

jump on a few rolls. What's it cost to ship a box to N2K1W7 in Canada?

Dunno but you are probably right. Shipping to Canada is silly expensive.

Somehow almost twice as expensive as shipping it south to the states. I could likely buy a crate of it from china,including shipping, for what it would cost to send a sixpack of it from buffalo or detroit.

The shipping cost is something I just do not seem to get. Canada/US is very expensive, however getting items off Ebay from China and some other countries is almost nothing. One would think that just going across the border from Canada to US would hardly matter. I mean the distance from the east side of Canada to Florida is about like California to Florida.

I can get a forever stamp to send a first class letter over seas for about $ 1.25. I just got in some small plastic pieces from China for less than $ 1 that included the parts and shipping. I bought something from India and the express shipping from DHL was not very much.

President Trump (let's ut aside the larger political issues for now, ok?) specifically mentioned this issue - namely that as part of the International Postal Union agreements, it was cheaper to ship from Shanghai to Chicago than LA to Chicago.

(Ok, I'm making up that specific example, but he had real ones)

He said he'd be tearing up that treaty as part of the whole international tariff renogotiation deal

Things didn't quite work out that far...

Note again: Not, NOT, intending this to be a thread abotu the bigger politics. Just as an informative post to say yes, the White House was aware of this.

I share your issue and I've brought it up here before. It's complicated and I've never seen a good explanation. What we need is something that explains what it costs a vendor in China for postage to get these items here and what the US winds up actually receiving. The basic concept is that a treaty was signed in the 1800s whereby the sending country keeps the postage. How the rates are set, IDK, but today it has something to do with countries being classified in tiers. The sending company keeping all the postage works OK if it's about balanced. But problems in the last century, where mailing was very imbalanced, lead to terminal dues. That is where a country that sends more mail to another country, based on weight, has to hand over a fee to the receiving company.

Like I said, how this all works, IDK, but it's not fair. If you or I see something on Ebay, it's about $3 to send a small, one ounce packet within the USA. I'm sure volume commercial businesses have lower rates, but they still must be paying $1 or more. Yet Chinese vendors are selling the item with shipping for $1! A guy here in NJ, decades ago started a campaign about this. He had invented and patented a drinking cup to use in your car. I forget the exact numbers, but he was selling it for like $8 plus shipping. Soon it was knocked off by the Chinese and they were selling it here for $7 including shipping. Despite all the complaining, this never got fixed.

I know last Fall the Trump administration was threatening to withdraw from the intl postal treaty, with this being a core issue. That's a good thing, something Trump was doing that was right. It got resolved and we're still in the treaty. So, the remaining question is if whatever is changed is still coming and we haven't seen it or it did not fix the above and we lost again.

I have seen it trying to be explained several times on here.

Still gets to me that I bought several small electronic items off ebay. A friend about 40 miles from me wanted just one and he does not do ebay or paypal. I went to the post office and it cost me more postage to send a item about like the USB memory stick than I got 3 of them from China postage paid. I sent it in a padded mailer from Office Depot that probably cost me more than the item did. He could have gotten atleast 5 of them from China for what it cost me to send him just one.

I think but not sure that ordering off ebay the items have to be sent to your address and I could not send it to him from China using paypal.

Not sure about the Ebay shipping address thing. I would think that if you've been on Ebay for awhile and done transactions they would let you ship to a different address, especially for cheap stuff.

Lets' go through some numbers on an example. Some item in China sells for $1 with free shipping.

$1 minus .10 Ebay final value fee .33 Paypal fee is .30+ 2.9%

So .57 is left to pay for the product, mailing materials, postage, overhead and profit. Also factor in that for every 100 things sold, some number will be lost, show up broken, defective, or the buyer just demands their money back. So, you have some losses there to cover.

So, whatever postage they are paying, like we say, it has to be a very small fraction of the $3 I would pay if I shipped it.

I can't speak for Ebay, but Amazon will default to the address of the account - but has a ticky-box on the first check-out screen to input an alternate delivery address - then the final payment screen will use that address for shipping fees. John T.

I recently bought a DVD from Amazon that is a Smithsonian Folkways recording of an old time banjo player. I didn't pay attention to the details and was surprised when it arrived in a few days with a Royal Post stamp on it. Not a clue why a US manufactured DVD took a detour to England.

I've also ordered books directly from Ireland and a DVD from India. No problems, quick delivery, and no exorbitant fees.

When workmen for the guy next door carelessly cut my phone/internet lines, they were going to use wire nuts and electric tape. I used solder and something like what you're describing.

One or two rolls would be great. How do I the send the label to you? Do I have to know the postage to buy it prepaid? How much postage do you think?

Remove NONONO from my email address to get my real address.

Thank the International Postal Union (treaty) that says if you pay local postage, the foreign country carries it free. I am sure China gives their merchants virtually free postage to the ship and we carry it the rest of the way for free. That is why I can buy a mouse from China for $2 with shipping and it would cost me $3+ to send it to the guy across the street.

ibid

I am still testing this but I think I can get away with a roll in a padded envelope for $2.20 but there are too heavy for 2. (DHS rules). $2.20 A roll seems like not that great a deal when you can get 20 for $15.05. The large flat rate box looks like it holds ~42-44 for $21 and change for the power user but I am still waiting for some from USPS.

I will let you know when I get down to my last 100 rolls or so but my wife is still screwing with me. She walks by the stack of boxes and kicks them. "What's in the boxes? Is it .... Tape"? and s*it like that.

Sounds like what hapened where I worked.

Some of those plastic anchors where you drill a 1/4 inch hole in the wall and use what looks like a sheet metal screw with. The fellow thought he was ordering a box of 100. Wound up with a cardboard box that had many boxes of 100 in them. Must have been 50 thousand of those things. That box was at least 2 feet in each direction.

Another was some chain just to secure some ladders to I beams so they would stay in the area. Just light weight chain was needed and so 100 feet of 1 inch links was ordered. We were told to come and get it from the loading dock as the fork lift could not handle the box. Found out those links were really one inch in diameter instead of being like 1/8 inch in diameter and 1 inch long.

At least the purching department did catch the ear plugs before they were ordered. There were about 20 people in our shop that needed ear plugs from time to time in the area. Those plugs usually lasted several months. Somehow the order went out for about 5 thousand of the plugs instead of about 50. Probably 100 to the box and 50 boxes would have been ordered instead of just 50 ear plugs.

I can't be that simple, for example an international letter here costs $1.15, while domestic it's .55. But I agree something is very wrong somewhere and I've suspected the same thing, that it could be because China has low internal rates. But as I said earlier, there are terminal dues and that is based in part on grouping of countries based on exactly what, IDK. But places like the US and Canada are in one tier and China is in the developing, third world country bunch.

Not to throw a wrench into your new business, but how do you ship a padded envelope with something that weighs a few ounces for $2.20? The only choices I see with the online USPS calculator and on Ebay, it's $2.70 min to about $3.10 based on distance and that's for a package that's one or two ounces and with Ebay discount. Let me guess. You took the weight and treated it as a letter weighing

There was a Montgomery Ward distribution center near where I grew up so you could phone in an order and go down and pick it up. The pickup was like the lottery; sometimes you got what you ordered, sometimes you didn't. Whether you mentioned that all depended.

I ordered a box of wheel weights, maybe 5 pounds or whatever the smallest selection was. When the guy staggered out with the garage assortment I paid the cashier the amount it said on the invoice and staggered out to the car with a lifetime supply of weights.

A lot of their merchandise was marked good, better, and best in the catalog. Getting a free upgrade courtesy of a semi-literate stock picker was always a possibility. otoh, you had to examine it closely to make sure it hadn't went the other way.