Did Amazon impose a rate adjustment for media mail that I missed?
Trying to ship a 3lb 9oz book and it is saying $6.17, when it should be $5.75. Pirate ship is giving the right price.
@Lost_My_Marbles ā¦ youāre up! LOL
I suspect this could be related to the new USPS Ground Advantage price changes. First-class and Parcel Select (now combined, and called Ground Advantage) went down. Maybe media mail rates went up.
Check this table -
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Weird. $6.17 is the new retail rate for media mail. Do online sellers pay retail rates for media mail under the new system? @Lost_My_Marbles ??
If those rates are going up Monday, make sure and ship your book today.
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Which site are you looking at? I am on usps.com:
And these are the prices I have been paying recently, both on Amazon and Pirateship.
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āGround Advantageā kicks in on Sunday, July 9, and Amazon seems to have already incorporated the rates. See this discussion, and below is the PDF that contains the price tables I quoted -
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FYI ā¦ for those interested in bookmarking the pageā¦
This USPS link is updated as USPS pricing changes are proposed and finalized. Has both excel files and PDF files of proposes/changes as they happen.
Note: The title name of the page will change with the most current pricing date of change but the page link generally has remained steady for a few years now.
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It looks like Amazon is jumping the gun again on shipping rates. I just shipped a Media Mail package today (Saturday) and Amazon Buy Shipping wanted me to use the rate that goes into effect tomorrow, July 9. No way. I used an alternative shipping method with todayās rate.
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The good news is, this only apparently affects media mail. The system is showing lower rates for Parcel Select (not sure if shipping today will trigger price adjustments later since these rates arenāt valid yet) and first-class rates arenāt changing so that shouldnāt cause problems.
Not suggesting those using media mail donāt count, itās just that at least itās only one service thatās being priced too high a day early.
Yepper; itās being discussed over in the NSFE, too, such as in long-time forum vet Fireside Anglerās discussion āAmazon Thanks For Charging New USPS Rates Earlyā (link, NSFE).
Sadly, I suspect that our friend @Picks_by_Nishaās query to Danika will goā¦unanswered.
It most likely will go unanswered. About a year ago, we were in discussions with mods over the zones on Amazon not matching what USPS said the zones were. Some Zone 5 on USPS were Zone 6 on Amazon (and so on). We were seeing this on a daily basis. Even though we gave multiple examples both on OFSE and through PM, a change never was made and goes on still to this day. When Priority Mail Flat Rate came out of holiday pricing in January 2023, it was priced at $8.50 which should have been $8.05. Amazon made no mention of it but did give refunds back on those purchases in late March / early April as a shipping adjustment but did not say what it was for (we figured it out because we knew how many PM FR packages we sent with the over priced $8.50 ā¦ refund matched the number).
One might possibly know when NSFE lights up with several threads on a new āotherā charge showing up with no explanation of what it is.
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For those of us without special commercial accounts, weāve ALWAYS paid the same for Media Mail as the retail rate. This is true on all platforms, including PirateShip, etc. The big commercial guys can get a special rate, but thatās directly through USPS, and not available through online marketplaces.
We actually scheduled a pickup today (we usually donāt ship on Saturday) to get everything out with the lower postage. But it turned out okay; we actually had enough volume that warrants a pick-up (assuming the carrier gets it; he knows we donāt usually ship Saturdays).
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USPS price lists have never had a tab for Media Commercial so it isnāt new but always was.
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Thanks! Yea, thatās probably it.
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