Dave, would you give an example of a package dimensions (L x W x H) in inches, weight in Lbs., from Zip code, to Zip code, insured amount, whether commercial or residential, and your recent negotiated UPS label fee?

It appears that some UPS rates increased in June, so a recent label fee would be needed.

I'd like to compare this with our PayPal / Shipstation label fee, and will post the result here.

Hi Paul I could do that, but at the behest of another ect user, we just in the last two weeks, went into ship station and turned on their discounted rates so we could compare my discounts next to ship station discounts.
I every case my rates were less. Particularly with 2nd day air service as we, being an Amazon seller too, were able to negotiate special additional discounts for that service to remain competitive with those sales.
Keep in mind that paypal and ship station are not giving you their full discounts - they are keeping part of it as a revenue stream.
I expect they are making quite a bit off this with ship station starting to add a fee for using your own UPS account.

I can certainly post up some rates, but I'm not sure it's going to help. First, if you go to your UPS rep and say you want the same rates as me, I could get into trouble as our contract explicitly states we cannot share our discount info with anyone. I don't think that is a big problem though. Second, unless you do the shipping volume we do, I don't think UPS would give our level of discounts to you. Last year, we shipped about 120 tons, which translates to about 1,000 pounds a day for the (approx) 250 days a year we are open. Some days, we nearly fill a truck.

Rather than post some examples here - If you want to do some comparisons, click my name and send me a message.

Thanks,
David

Dave, our shared fulfillment center advised that the rates offered by the recent PayPal / Shipstation integration are significantly lower than they get through their longstanding Shipstation setup.

ETA: here's a PayPal / Shipstation screen shot of one of our typical shipments, 12x12x5" and 8 Lbs, insured for $100, between two commercial facilities - from Cedar Park TX 78613 to Jacksonville FL 32218. UPS Ground is charged at $12.28.

If you're getting a much lower UPS rate I'll be really impressed!

This is without (added) insurance, but UPS gives you $100.00 worth for free.
I do not have great rates for 3-day select as customers almost never use that service. So I'm not surprised that rate is higher for us. If a customer did select 3-day service, we would just ship it 2nd day air - as you can see our 2day rate is a good bit less than our 3day rate.
I have very aggressive 2nd day air rates. In some cases, for 1-2 pound shipments, our 2nd day air rate is lower than our ground rate and we upgrade many shipments to this service.
We recently added surepost too as many of our Amazon orders are now shipping with that service as there are no residential surcharges for surepost and it's less than ground in cost.

David

Wow, it does look like your negotiated UPS rate is lower than what's offered in the PayPal / Shipstation integration.

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Wow, it does look like your negotiated UPS rate is lower than what's offered in the PayPal / Shipstation integration.

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Yes, and some of this is from switching to Fedex some years ago, and then back to UPS.
Each time, I was able to get the new carrier to up the discounts over the old carrier to gain my business.
I expect we are getting better discounts than most companies our size, but some of that is clever negotiations I think.

Don't be afraid to get in good with your rep and have them go to bat for you. They have quite a bit of influence over your discounts.

Thanks,
David