Loading ...
If you have no interest in my continuing recap of our experiences shipping Kickstarter rewards, I suppose it’s best you mosey on along, cuz it’s not over yet.
The United States Postal Service has a legendarily bad reputation, to the point it’s one of those symbols of government bureaucracy gone wrong, where surly and uncooperative clerks barely tolerate your presence before handing your fragile and irreplaceable packages off to a black void of delay, damage, and loss.
In truth–at least from my perspective–they ain’t so bad. Maybe it was the competition of courier services like FedEx and UPS, or the rise of email and other Internet services for communications, or a combination of both, but my experiences have generally been positive, both sending and receiving. So when it came time to choose shipping options for fulfillment of the Zombie Ranch kickstarter, the USPS remained on my list. In fact, in the end I ended up doing all my fulfillment shipments with them. Why? Well, like I said, I had no real horror stories, and the price was definitely right.
The pricing was odd because I remember hearing from people that the courier services were cheaper, but when I went to compare rates there was no contest, even on the economy options like UPS Ground. The courier international rates were even more shuddersome. Recently there was a change in rates because of the couriers starting to use “dimensional weight“, but our packages even for our high-end tiers shouldn’t have been big enough to trigger that; regardless, the numbers just weren’t good for our particular situation where we had nothing weighing over four pounds that needed delivery. The courier options seemed most suited towards heavy packages needing to go a long distance. And supposedly it was more reliable, but I’d had incidents refuting that with UPS at least.
Anyhow, I mentioned Media Mail in the last blog, which is how we ended up sending out all the books to our domestic backers (it’s not available internationally). About 30 books were shipped in cushioned envelopes, and out of those I so far know of only one SNAFU that has to be corrected, with all the rest arriving safely. Ditto for the separate high-tier swag shipments sent later by Priority Mail, all of which seem to have arrived without incident. That leaves the only question marks being the international packages and the tiny “secret stash” boxes we sent First Class Parcel, so we’ll see how they go, or don’t go as the case may be.
Now I’m not advocating this method for everyone, even though so far it’s worked out for us. In particular it’s probably insanity to use low-cost USPS services if you’re sending something unique and irreplaceable — in our case we have the luxury of having made sure we have backups, as well as dealing with a relatively small and patient group of contributors. If and when we do another Kickstarter we’ve definitely got some new lessons in mind and will be revisiting our options for fulfillment. Rates can change all the time, and if any of our international packages end up seriously delayed or lost, well, that’ll be a factor, too.
But considering shipping seems to be the number one place where Kickstarters end up “failing” in spite of success, fate so far is dealing us a kind, if not perfect hand, and we’re on track for our promised October fulfillment. People are getting the goodies they pledged for and enjoying them. So thank you, USPS — and may I not have jinxed anything by saying that.