Same name but mostly participated in Locked Handmade forum. I might look at revising CA for 3 days. I’m an under promise and over deliver kinda of person when it comes to Amazon. Never know when it might come in handy to nudge that 3 star review to a 4.
Make sure you check a few orders to be sure what Buy Shipping ‘thinks’ before you do. You can check the transit times Buy Shipping uses by counting the days between your ‘ship date’ and the date it shows as estimated delivery. Be aware that Amazon adjusts them on a semi-frequent basis, as it appears they’ve done today, to make me look like I don’t know what I’m talking about. 
Here’s an example going to a customer in Sacramento.
Shipping on Friday shows that Buy Shipping thinks it will arrive on Monday. When counting days, you omit Sunday and holidays. So I would conclude - if I ship on Friday, Buy Shipping is programmed to think delivery to Sacramento will take 2 days (count Saturday, Monday).
This normally shows Tuesday, as northern California (minus San Francisco) has been programmed as a 3-day delivery for the longest time. This is the first time in years I’ve seen Buy Shipping treat FC mail as a 2 day service to anywhere.
If this “sticks” then I could conceivably offer 2-day delivery to Northern California (even with SFP @Image 
) and Buy Shipping would let me buy a FC mail label.
I suspect it won’t stick, but these are the kinds of things you should always double-check before adjusting your delivery promises. If I offered 2-day to Sacramento and then Buy Shipping changed back to calling that a 3-day region, I’d be screwed.
Will do. I’m in Texas, which is a big state but has a lot of infrastructure - I’ll keep an eye out and comment back. Or if I have some downtime I’ll find a past in-state order and see what it had.
Sorry for the delay, life and everything, yada yada yada.
Anyway, when we were 98% FC our handling time was 3 days (normally shipped within 12 hours of order) and Shipping Automation had not been dreamed of yet.
We also tended to be somewhat generous on transit times, I think we were 4-8 days to most locations west of the Mississippi (we are east coast).
The combo of these two things showed customers some far out delivery dates, but metrics wise it was HOT, cause we would normally DELIVER before the ship by date. The Buy Box LOVED US.
Now, this was all pre-lockdown. Things changed in 2019 when Hazmat classifications changed, this split our shipments nearly in half, 50% FC, 50% UPS. We adapted, pricing went up a little (no more bubble mailers on hazmat, we had approval previously from the postmaster), and no more free ship on Hazmat. Postal inspectors were the ones who “informed” us of the change (Funny story for another time), and then used us to investigate other sellers violating new DOT rules (they would watch our ASINS for other sellers and do test buys if the pricing/shipping seemed too low).
Now, why would we set handling and transit times so high? Because we all know USPS can, fumble, and we built in this “fudge time” to “CYA.” It also protected us in case we could not ship for a day or two (we did take one cay off a week, and in case of Emergencies, MORE ABOUT THAT later also).
Will this work for everyone? nope.
Will it work for ANYONE now with shipping automation and handling times being changed without consent? Prob Not, Our management software FORCED the handling time on each ASIN, over-riding Amazon’s nightly changes within seconds, again, not for everyone.
I hope this answers a few questions and helps others! Feel free to ask additional questions if needed!
I too do 99.999 percent of my orders first class until they go over the 16 ounces.
I normally posted in the closed Handmade forum, but I have a mix of marketplace and handmade.
I have my processing or handling time set to 1 day (mainly for marketplace items, handmade is down from 7 days to 4 days).
Recently I bitched – can we cuss here? – because I swear I chose first class USPS for a 4 ounce item and Amazon bumpted it over to UPS.
What I found out too was that the addresses were in Timbuktu, USA… Like in California and Arizona there are communities with no friggin mail carrier. So everyone is required to have a P.O. Box for mail. This place is locked right to the world… well I would normally jump over to ShipStation buy the shipping there, and confirm with tracking manually.
But one time – I googled the address, called the main office of the campground/trailer park and figured out what was going on… Had one customer where the package came back and she finaly admitted to not having a mail box.
And had something in the shipping settings not set right either for Standard or Value Shipping. Fixed that and so far so good.
I was keeping an eye out when shipping for a 4 ounce package triggered a UPS label and investigated the WHY.
Iris
99% of my sales are 1/2 to 3 ounce First Class postage sales. Once in a while I get a Priority Mail or International order which I use DHL for. I sell a few books related to the coin and stamp collecting hobbies but them sales are few. My sales are finally back to where they should be after the Amazon collectible coin category snafu last year that took 8 months to get fixed. At least one thing good came out of it, I have store branding on stamps and coins now. My average monthly sales has went way up because of that. Buy Box I always have due to what I sell. But I am still loading up other venues and my website because of what Amazon pulled on the Collectible Coin sellers last year, I do not trust them any more.
We use First Class & Priority…looking towards Sure Post right now to see what kind of savings they offer. I would love to use Buy Shipping for all the guarantees, but just can’t figure out how to make the process faster. It just doesn’t work for 1000’s of random size items at all different weights and box dimensions.
Pricing varies obviously, but I like SurePost because UPS is pretty reliable and it leaves less for the post office to screw up. Plus it travels with other UPS Ground, unlike FedEx’s version.
We’re thinking of trying
Sure Post to Replace Priority Mail
Mail Innovations to Replace First Class.
Our UPS reps offered good rates.
They said it could integrate so it would be great if it all worked on the same Endicia Professional and all we need to do is choose the shipper.
I can use buy shipping for bulk labels/mailing and do once in a while and still have all the guarantees. I have all my package sizes standardized and weight on most packages is 0.08 ounce but I just make them all 3 ounce when doing bulk. My volume is low enough where I usually just do them one at a time, it only takes a couple minutes per package max.
At your volume I’d recommend ground with ups/fedex for items over 10 pounds
I’m at a lower order of magnitude than you are (I did between 25-30k packages last year) my most popular weights are 12, 13 and 14 pounds, and I’m averaging $14 for ground residential delivery
Our wheelhouse is 2lbs & under
We seem to be having several discussions about different things, all mixed into one. 
My particular expertise is in setting up shipping templates to ensure that Buy Shipping always offers first-class mail as an option.
This has nothing (directly) to do with how long packages will actually take to be delivered. It’s all about what you can promise the customer, and still be able to buy a FC label through Amazon.
In my experience, Buy Shipping’s estimates for how long FC will take for delivery are way off. Way way off. Some sellers, I think, believe that when FC isn’t offered in Buy Shipping, it somehow means that FC would be delivered late. Not true.
Estimates for first-class mail delivery in Buy Shipping have little ==>if anything<== to do with reality.
We ship between 50 and 100 a day via first class mail.
Amazon often has these same packages default to UPS which shows their cost to be 10 to 20 cents cheaper but we always use First class as a rule.
We are on the Eastern part of the country but have had little if any issue at all with packages arriving on time within Amazon’s window. We usually ship same day (if before 2 pm) or next day without exception.
So far we have not found a way to have under 1 pound default to USPS. We have to be very mindful to be sure we make the correction. Although UPS appears to be less expensive I believe we all heard the stories of the “fuel surcharges” and other costs UPS is pinning on these deliveries. If there’s a way to ensure it defaults that way we haven’t found it.
I’m out west and have lightning fast first-class mail delivery nearly everywhere nationwide (never been sure why), so we don’t have problems either. Although, for the discussion of how Buy Shipping ‘works’, delivery times aren’t really relevant.
So far we have not found a way to have under 1 pound default to USPS.
It always defaults to the lowest cost. Amazon’s sponsored discounts for UPS are only there to ‘beat’ the other guy’s service. For instance, if Buy Shipping says the price for first-class mail is $4.20, Amazon may ‘promote’ UPS Ground at a similar price.
But if first-class mail is not offered, then there’s no reason for Ground to be offered at a comparable price. I don’t have a great example to show right now, so I’ll have to try and explain with words. This order gives me FC mail as an option, so UPS shows up at a similar price to try and draw me away…
But if there was a case where I decided to ship Monday, and Buy Shipping decided FC mail wouldn’t arrive in time, then it wouldn’t be offered, so the $4.20 option wouldn’t be there, and the $4.42 UPS price would be gone as well.
Every UPS Sponsored price is trying to draw you away from using a different option. If there’s no comparable/better option available, there will be no UPS Sponsored discount.
‘Comparable/better’ seems to take into account both price, and transit times.
Do you mind if I ask how you have your transit times set up in your shipping templates? Do you use the same transit time to all destinations, or do you have them set up by regions? I’d like to compare notes with someone on the other coast.
I just moved to the east coast 3 years ago. I did live within a few miles of the small statue of liberty marking the exact center of the continental USA. I had great mail service there everything went quickly no matter where you mailed to. I have no problem here on the east coast with mail, but I would prefer living on the west coast again. Never be able to afford a home on a private lake in CA though like I can in SE Georgia…lol
I must have something set wrong – the UPS Ground option has never been under like $8 for me, never ever…
Everything is under 16 ounces…more like 4-8 ounces on average. But for UPS it says 1 lb. and nothing by ounce.
If I remember correctly, I was only using the standard template and not the free shipping template. So under standard, the choice was 1-3 days, but under free economy (the one above it), I could pick 1-4 days (doing that off the top of my head…)
Is there a reason for not using UPS? I go to the post office and my local UPS store every day. If Amazon offers me UPS (for a lower cost), I always use it since it makes my USPS load a bit lighter & I like the UPS store - he gives me awesome deals on my shipping supplies.
I’m in the middle south so (knock on wood), I haven’t had any delivery issues doing this. But maybe there are issues I’m missing.
Several posters on the old forum mentioned they were receiving additional “fuel surcharges” and other costs that were above what was quoted when they printed their UPS label. I can imagine a $2.40 fuel surcharge on a $3.90 package would take it well over the cost USPS would charge.
Since there’s no way of knowing when those surcharges will be assessed and why, when it’s under a pound we chose USPS to avoid that. If USPS and UPS are close in cost over a pound, we still chose USPS - again, not knowing when these surcharges will be added (or why) this could make the cost to use UPS much higher. I was hoping to get more information but it doesn’t seem to be available (unless someone here has located it, and if you have please post!) We love UPS and USPS - cost definitely makes the difference as to who we choose.