December 2015 Shipping Update

An update on our freight options - Some prices have come down, especially Melbourne metro. We have introduced express options for many cities.

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Changes to Shipping Zones and Rates

I have written many articles in the past about the numerous challenges faced in the Australian logistics industry - these affect both customers and merchants around Australia.

Unfortunately, there is no secret silver bullet or remedy that can be implemented to enable us to reach our desired targets. Are we unreasonable ?........I don't think so. We just want a service to perform within our own customer's expectations.

In the last month we have implemented revisions to the 2,500+ freight rules that calculate postage charges.

These have been driven by the changes to freight pricing by suppliers and more specifically the "controversial" re-zoning for some of our large capital cities like Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane/Gold Coast areas.

In a nutshell, freight companies are now deeming postcodes that had previously existed within the metro region of the Eastern capital cities as "outside" of the metro and into new outer metro zones - effectively creating 2 metro zones for many of our capital cities.

This of course means that freight charges may be slightly higher than previously for outer metro areas. To compensate, they have reduced the rates on some inner metro zones (although it looks like this has been limited to Melbourne only at this stage).

Personally, I don't like this action by freight companies because it is not entirely fair charging up to $3 difference depending upon how close you live to the CBD. As an example, inner metro Melbourne is now a super-cheap $5.50 whereas outer metro is $8.17. However, the situation is out of our control.

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Express Services

In February 2016 we enabled AusPost Express Parcel. 

For most of our zones we created a TNT Express option in November 2015, but have since switched off this option after sustaining an incredible number of unreasonable surcharges for residential deliveries by TNT - sometimes in excess of an extra $20 per delivery.

We have been using the TNT service behind the scenes for more than 12 months now for Business to Business and it's simply superb. The challenge though is that the pricing is geared more towards higher quantity/weight items. It's expensive for small parcels but cheaper and faster for the larger 12+ kilos to most destinations, etc.

Okay. So it is back to roasting high quality coffee beans for me then.