NEVER JET HOT

Even after literally hundreds of trips to the post office, Petey still worries that someone will go in there and accidentally get shipped to Abu Dhabi. After all, to a dog, the post office is like enemy headquarters.

I had not remembered about Columbus Day* until I tried to print postage for Monday ships and stamps.com pushed it up to Tuesday. I remember when I was a kid, all the stores would remind you by having big Columbus Day sales ("Ladies Underwear half off for Columbus!" OK, I made that one up) but not so much anymore. I understand it's a real big deal back east. They love him in Sheboygan. Apparently there are many who don't like him because he started the whole colonization thing. But hey look, if it wasn't him, it would have been someone else. Eventually an airplane capable of going to the edge of the world would have been invented, anyway. At any rate, we can't ship anything until Tuesday morning. I hope this doesn't put a crimp in anyone's toothpaste. * Columbus Day, not "Columbo" day, whereupon everyone wears a raincoat and asks lots of questions

I got to thinking, maybe those Ebay customers who are only wanting maybe one giant pen, or a Cubes delivery guy, maybe they are put off by the $4.99 flat rate shipping - So I made a deal in the auction/ebaystore template whereas we will send them a no-strings coupon worth $3 on their next order if the shipping is more than a dollar over what our shipping cost is. Nevermind the fact that there is more to shipping than just postage, we have to buy the non-priority boxes, plus there's bubblewrap, all sorts of tape, and equipment like you would not believe. Plus the tape-gun repairman is taking two of our tape guns to the shop for complete rebuild and destickify process. Also and most unfortunately for us tax-wise, we live in Washington state, them in Olympia and some other fat-cat friendly states are setting up tax-collection rules that will swat tiny internet businesses like the fruit flies around the festering trashcan of business that we are. OK, my analogy got a little haywire, bu...

We had to adjust the shipping rates a bit as the USPS made an astronomical jump in rates. I tried to configure it so we continue our policy of just about breaking even on the shipping department overall, although rates are now so complex that we would spend our whole day figuring if we always charged actual rate, so some will end up paying a little extra, some will be paying less than it costs us to ship their package. But the exact amount you would pay is always displayed on the shopping cart screen at every step. For some reason it likes to display "Overseas" at first, you can of course use that drop-down menu to get to your preferred method. If I can't figure out how to change the default back to "best rate USA" I will get with my shopping cart service to help resolve that puzzling issue. The post office raised their package rates so high, I fully expect my carrier to be driving a new Chrysler 300 with spinner hubcaps and rich Corinthian leather appointment...

We have been using the good old US post office for shipping, unfortunately soon the rates will go up, and worse yet, become much more complicated. How will this impact you? Our policy is to not make the shipping department a profit center. Our overall handling fee was less than 57 cents per shipment for the 30 days preceding this post. We are constantly adjusting our rates to meet your delivery needs without gouging you on shipping.