The US Postal Service has announced rate increases beginning 1/22/2017. Since shipping costs are very important to our customers, we've done some research to let you know ahead of time how this will affect shipping costs for your models. Spoiler: Generally, it's almost a non-issue.
1) Parcel Post will see an increase ranging from around 2.7% - 4.9%. (If shipping would have cost you $20 last year, it will cost between $.55 and $1.00 more in 2017.)
2) The new rates for Priority Mail are a bit more complicated:
- Boxes weighing under 3 pounds, will see an increase at the most, 6.6%.
- Boxes between 3 and 6 pounds will stay almost exactly the same.
- Boxes over 6 pounds will increase 3% to 9.9%, depending on destination.
- Most of our customers whose orders ship Priority historically paid less than $14... So even with a 9.9% increase, your cost in that case would only have gone up $1.40. Basically, it sounds worse than it really is.
3) International rates have not changed.
So, what does this mean for all of our collectors out there?
Rates are going up a little, but not enough to be noticeable, unless your order will weigh over 8 pounds and you're on the West Coast, Alaska, or Hawaii.
At Triple Mountain, our website calculates shipping using USPS data, to be as accurate as possible. Even so, it's still tricky to get a website to understand that even though one horse will weigh 2 pounds to ship, five horses won't actually weigh 10 pounds.... Which is why we have a pretty unique policy: If actual shipping costs less than you pay by $5 or more, we'll refund the difference automatically when we ship! We never want you to overpay for models OR shipping. You can trust that we're always watching for ways to protect your budget while bringing you the best models to be found!