What's your shipping experience?

I'm in Canada. I will rarely buy an item that is not shipped by USPS. (I calculate the premium for putting up with courier border fees and delivery hassle at a minimum of $50 or so.) I don't buy enough stuff that I know the difference between USPS options, so feel free to require whatever bells&whistles make you comfortable.

USPS Priority is my favorite. It is super fast, and I would rather get my order in 2-3 days than know that it is currently enroute to Wilmington, DE.

I think DHL is faster for "ground" shipping within the US than other shippers, with USPS and FedEx having pretty good speeds and UPS definitely being the slowest. Cross country shipments (or even Chicago to LA) take 5 days via UPS while DHL is 1-2 days and FedEx Ground and USPS are 2-4.

I agree with LA Guy.

I used to ship a lot of things UPS because people appreciate the tracking, but it was too expensive, and USPS priority is a much better value, so far as price and speed. I never shipped heavy things or large amounts, dunno if that affects things. I would expect most online customers have come to expect better tracking than USPS offers, for better or for worse.

I don't know about DHL, but I've had either terrible luck or a terrible local delivery guy, because stuff shipped via DHL to me is always late or delivered to the wrong address. (The end effect of this is, when I see an online retailer/ebay seller ships DHL, it turns me off.)

I use FedEx at work all the time, and it's great--almost universally on time and generally ccountable when not. But I'm not paying for it

DHL sucks, big time.

Jon.

USPS Priority is the best, although their tracking system is worthless. UPS is pretty good (tracking system is ace) but a tad more expensive. Fedex is extremely reliable but costly. I would only use it to ship very expensive/valuable items.

+1

For shipping to the UK, USPS mostly works out the cheapest, since it normally arrives via our normal postal service (not always though, maybe size dependant?) and they aren't that thorough about checking for duty. I've only been charged once, on a parcel from Singapore, in fact. Speed is really variable though, anywhere from 5 days to almost 4 weeks (particularly recently it seems). Most of the other courier companies are much more liable to charge duty (*cough* not that I would wish to avoid paying it ), and add on a huge "admin" fee on top...

I HATE FedEx. They lie constantly (the last 3 times I've been forced to use them, they have lied to me on the phone/website about having come by when they didn't, or "we'll tell the driver to call you ahead of time so you can be there"... yeah right) and require me to be home to receive a package. They've wasted a ton of my time. I prefer USPS generally.

Domestically, USPS cant be beat

Internationally I prefer DHL if it's a courier service....I get packages from UK in 2-3 days via DHL and the shipping costs are less than UPS or other couriers

Mods: would it be worth pinning this to the top of B&S? I imagine shopjake isn't the only seller who's interested...

When receiving shipments from the US, I always prefer USPS. The brokerage fees we have to pay for UPS here in Canada often kill the deal. IIRC, it is $30 plus any applicable taxes for UPS, whereas for USPS it is only $5 plus taxes. I'm not sure about other carriers such as Fedex and DHL, but I think they may have the same problem as UPS.

USPS is the best value for shipping to Spain in my limited experience, although I wouldn't use them for very valuable items. Forgot to mention: I've always had to pay customs duties on UPS stuff, but only sometimes on USPS. No idea why.

Yeah, I could do that.

Done.