How Much? How Much? How Much? How Much? How Consumers and businesses are flocking to the internet to shop around for the lowest prices, international shipping service is no exception! But be careful what you wish for the cheapest shipping rates are not always the best option!

Economy Impacting Shipping Industry:

Consumers are being squeezed hard these days, spending is being cut, inflation is up and cost of everything is going up! Fuel cost increases are affecting the transportation industry and forcing airliners and carriers to raise their rates to offset the rate hikes and drop in volume! Consumers are reacting to this phenomenon by limiting their International shipping to bare minimum and utilizing Ground transportation. Air Express Shipments have been reduced dramatically. Consumers are using email and PDF files to share documents almost instantly and they have almost no need for the Post Office or Overnight shipping.

Shipping Quote: How Much?

Consumers and businesses are using the internet to shop around! Don’t count on customer loyalty factor here. It is all about How much? Cost concerns are driving Shipping Quote request volume to historic levels. Everyone is looking for the same thing: Low prices! Shipping companies are realizing that answering these quote requests is big time-wasting exercise. Often, shipping companies will spend time and resources to get the customer a quote but 90% of the time, customers are just shopping around for lowest price or trying to get a written quote to force other vendors to lower their shipping quote. Customers often play shipping companies against its other.

Shipping companies cannot afford to pursue these leads anymore, they are time-consuming and they often do not generate revenue for them. When they do, the margins are so low that the shipping companies lose money in long run. Often consumers won’t bother giving accurate dimensions or weight to calculate the shipping rate, “Just tell me how much will it cost to ship a medium box to Africa?” Shipping companies can not just pick a number and hope for the best, shipping quotes MUST be accurate or close to it if you want to end up with a happy customer.

To compute a shipping quote, customers need to provide:

• Destination Information: City, State, Country
• Size of shipment Length, Height, Width
• Weight of shipment.
• Content of shipment: Make sure it is allowed by international standards.
• Value: Insurance and Tax values.
• Preferred method of shipping: Ground, freight or Express
• Packaging.

At Neighborhood Parcel, we take quote requests seriously and we do our part in providing accurate quotes within 48 Hrs whenever possible. However there are occasions where we do not answer quotes, here are few examples:

• Incomplete Requests.
• Prohibited commodities.
• Shipping to restricted areas.
• Inaccurate Data.
• Bogus requests.
• Complex logistics.
• Low Margin projects.