Why don’t you offer a packing and shipping service?

Well, we don’t offer these services, but our shipping partner, Pack & Send, does.

It’s just that we don’t pack or ship directly, ie with our own hands. I’ll explain why, using an example of equipment we just sold through our store.

Example

We recently sold a piece of equipment and asked the customer for an initial $150 to cover packing and shipping from Perth to Sydney. I explained that if it were more, they would need to pay the difference, as expected, no problem.

The quote from Pack and Send to pack, insure and ship was $231. The customer mentioned that he thought $150 was high, so I did something stupid that I stopped doing a decade ago: I tried to save a customer, who probably earns far more than I do, money.

Shipping costs what it costs, and those costs have absolutely nothing to do with me. Professional packing and shipping that delivers expensive items in one piece rather than several must be paid for; it’s that simple.

My Cost

I drove to AusPost to try to find a box. They didn’t have the right size, so I drove home and looked for packaging materials, to no avail. Next stop, Bunnings, where I bought a box and some bubble wrap. I don’t keep packing and shipping materials because I don’t pack and ship things. All that took over 60 minutes.

It took me another 30+ minutes to carefully wrap and pack the equipment. The box felt flimsy, so I drove back to Bunnings for another box so I could double-box it. That took another 30+ minutes, on a hot Perth day. By now, AusPost was closed, and my dehydration headache was significant. I had to wait until the next morning to take the box to AusPost, another 30+ minutes round trip.

The total cost for shipping and insurance with AusPost was $97 vs. the $231 the customer should have paid via Pack & Send. If you’re thinking that’s great because I ‘saved’ the customer $134, you might have forgotten that the equipment doesn’t pack, drive and pay for itself.

My costs were $15 for materials + $10 for fuel + a conservative 150 minutes @ $150 an hour, plus a nasty headache = $400, plus pain. Saving this customer $134 they should have paid cost me $400. Absolutely stupid; never again.

Time & Motion

This is why we use Pack & Send for our packing and shipping. Time is everything when you run a small business. I can’t afford to lose $400 on a small sale. I’m not responsible for shipping costs; people either pay them, or they don’t. Either way, this probably needed to happen to cement in place my resolve to never again try to save a customer a small amount of money at much greater cost to me. I’m just annoyed at myself for doing it.

So, the next time you’re wondering if we offer a packing service or use Australia Post, you’ll know why the answer to those questions is no. Whilst the up-front cost of using a logistics specialist is a little higher, the total cost is actually less, and the process is streamlined and safer.