Ranting about shipping costs!!!

70Duster440 said
FedEx and UPS raise their rates 5% the first of every year now. In the company I work for we have talked to FedEx reps about rates and told we can, in part, thank Amazon for rate increases. All those boxes of air you get from Amazon? Those empty boxes fill up trucks. They also negotiate rates so they can advertise free shipping. Someone's got to pay for it so that's everyone else who ships. Nothing is free. Someone, somewhere pays.

Truer words have never been spoken.
For close to a decade my job with the USPS was to "cut" first class presort mail. Cages of mail that came from Mailing Houses that were got a discounted rate for partially "processing" mail. I was supposed to look only at the label on the end of the tray and place the mail according to that. For example, labels that said 850 9 DigBC went in the cage that went to the area of the USPS (the DB section) that only dealt with 9 digit barcoded mail, bypassing the area that sprayed the orange code the (OCR's) on the back of the letter. These mailing houses were getting a 60-75% discount for doing this. Often times I would get visited by the DB boss asking why I sent them a dozen cages of mail that had no barcode. Explained I was just going by what the label said. Got tired of getting bitched at, started looking thru trays themselves. Got back from lunch one day to find 30 cages of mail, all of labeled with the 850 9DigBC labels. Dug thru a few trays, none of it had a 9 digit barcode. Found a driver, hauled it back to the acceptance unit. Got in a very heated discussion. Was like talking to a tree. The unit that was responsible for revenue protection could not care less that this mailer was getting a 70% discount and doing nothing to earn it. Mail ended up running thru the OCR's...with all the rest of the full rate mail.
And the place is crying the blues about $$. Go figure.