Silk Road forums
Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: USAShroomzz on January 25, 2013, 01:55 pm
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Be aware all vendors that USPS shipping rates are going up on 1/27. For instance a small priority flat rate box was 5.35, now 5.80. DCN number cost has gone up as well to .90, but still may get a .10 discount when combined with priority (not sure until they update the shipping calculator on monday).
Don't lose your package due to insufficient postage!!
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Be aware all vendors that USPS shipping rates are going up on 1/27. For instance a small priority flat rate box was 5.35, now 5.80. DCN number cost has gone up as well to .90, but still may get a .10 discount when combined with priority (not sure until they update the shipping calculator on monday).
Don't lose your package due to insufficient postage!!
Price of a DCN has gone up?
From the article I've read it sounds like it is actually free now.
Shipping Services
Several new Shipping Services products will be available in January. Free tracking will be offered to all competitive packages, including retail Priority Mail and Parcel Post (recently renamed Standard Post).
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Free tracking is only on prepaid shipping labels from the usps website as they have always done. But of course no one uses that because you would have to put your personal info on file with the addresses you ship out to.
I dont know why, but they cut off the section in "domestic extra services and fees" under the shipping services tab and the price for DCN is not there anymore. Last time I checked it was listed as .90 cents at retail. I would check the postal calculator monday to make sure.
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The announcement I was referring to explicitly says RETAIL priority mail. Prepaid labels from online are Commercial Base, not retail.
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Bump
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Well they must have just recently made that announcement, because I checked the usps calculator today and the prices are updated. The small flat rate box is 5.80 and yup it is free DCN tracking both online and retail now. USPS must have made the decision in the last 2 weeks to make the DCN free, because I tell you they had it listed in the extra services category a couple weeks ago as going up to .90 for retail. Their business is hurting so bad because of inept union workers and a fake privatized business model, so they must be getting competitive with the free offer.
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I found that announcement (easy to google "January 2013 usps price increase") that was referenced (probably)
Oct. 11, 2012
http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2012/pr12_114.htm
They didn't update the website pricing until it was actually today though.
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So the cost to send small flat rate with tracking has actually gone down then?
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It depends. If you used any form of online shipping (just an "official" label w/DCN built in for free already & still stamps or online postage) then it went up. If you used a normal printed label w/a green DCN sticker, then it went down I suppose.
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Suggest checking out the USPS website before you send anything. Saw the sign at the PO today and for Express, it said $18.95, online it is saying that increased to 19.95 as of today. But the sign at the PO was about the price increase, supposedly. Maybe they haven't figured it out yet.
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Humboldt'sFinest is reporting that his post office isn't allowing him to do the anonymous DCN tags anymore and you have to get the tracking printed out by the PO worker. However, i dropped off packages yesterday with paper stamps and DCN stickers and it says that they were accepted at my postoffice.
Can anyone else verify if DCN tags can still be used anonymously or if online/printed labels are now the only option. If anonymity is not allowed anymore this is going to fuck things up on SR.
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If anonymity is not allowed anymore this is going to fuck things up on SR.
Indeed. Toward the end of last year there were lots of conspiracy theories when SR went down for a few days, and people talked about the 'quickbuy' image hack in the same way... lots of drama and trolling and silliness.
But this... this is the first time I've really felt like the future of SR is in jeopardy. If there are no methods to anonymously send packages and have any kind of confirmation of delivery-- at best, transactions will be reduced to 'pay and pray', and at worst, unwary or unsavvy vendors will make mistakes that will eventually get them and their buyers arrested.
Surely the majority of these DCN labels were bought for legal uses by individuals who have nothing to do with SR. Can the USPS just abruptly render all of them null and void? I can imagine the chaos that would cause, unless there is some kind of grace period during the adjustment to the new rules. If there is, then I'm getting my sh*t while I still can.