has anyone had any prior experience using the qwik pack & ship on hwy 70 in clayton next to mckinnleys? i have gone there a few times now because there is never a line and i feel like he may be ripping me off. do private shipping locations use their own costs? i dropped off a package on saturday around 1:30 that needed to be mailed to georgia and he told me the cheapest way would be priority and theres a possibility that it would get there by wednesday. it arrived in georgia today which is ridiculously fast, and for the amount he charged me i feel like he may have charged me for one of the most expensive methods but acted like it was priority mail! any thoughts? :?
I was actually there today to send something via FedEx. When I realized they also send for the USPS, I sent a packet out and was shocked because the charge was $3 and change..I send these out all the time and at the Post Office downtown Clayton it always costs $1.90. I was wondering the same thing!
Just about all "pack and ship" places charge over and above what the shipping companies do. It's how they make their money. It would be cheaper to go directly to the post office or directly to a UPS or FedEx facility, but you're paying extra for the convenience you mentioned. 1-day Priority Mail to Georgia is not unheard of. It is advertised as a 2-day service to most places in the country, so 1 day to a nearby state is reasonable. The only faster service from the US Postal Service is Express Mail, and it is ridiculously expensive. They wouldn't have been able to hide that from you. Unfortunately, I've never seen a "pack and ship" place advertise exactly how much over the normal rates they charge, so if you don't know the rates to start with, it's hard to know if their surcharge is reasonable.
Actually most pack and ship places also ship enough volume to get a discount price from the carriers. For example they open and set-up a commercial Fed Ex account for pack/ship and in the contract they sign with Fed Ex. they get a 1% discount if they ship up to X number of packages, from X to Y they get 2% discount, and Y to Z they get 3% discount. Anything above Z they would get a 5% discount. Now this discount doesn't get applied till they receive their monthly bill.
