People should go to the postal calculator and look at the rates small business in this country are being charged to make up for the Chinese robbing us blind.
Priority used to be a flat $3.
Now it's only flat if you use their boxes that practically nothing fits in, the rates vary depending on the box, and the cheapest, which they never have in stock anyway, is almost $8. Using your own box triggers zone pricing where you basically get fucked if you ship more than two states away. In my case, just about anywhere outside of the 13 colonies.
A few years ago, they fucked us by taking away commercial base rate, which basically jacked prices up 10% overnight. They're trying to force you into subscriptions with places like
stamps.com that charge $20/month. Those places pass along the commercial base rate because they're getting an even lower commercial plus rate from USPS. So USPS basically said "fuck off, mom and pop, we want _less_ money from big corporations."
Last year they started this dimensional weight bullshit, which makes large but light packages ridiculously expensive. I used to source inventory from buying large lots on eBay. Can't do it now that what used to cost $20 to ship now costs $70 or $80.
And none of that has stopped a 7% YOY increase in prices for the last 3-4 years at least.
It's made selling online really difficult because if $20 TFs didn't scare customers off, $10 average to ship them usually does. Nope, people waltz right on over to Chinese sellers that aren't charging shipping because it costs them virtually nothing. All of this is being done to fuck small businesses, many of which started because so many "jobs" are piecework/gigs or contract if they exist at all.
