$50 usd shipping fee

SIRGALANT

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as you know i`m in australia , and some fellow forumites have told me that its $50 usd to have spyderco ship you anything to australia. how do you justify such a ridiculous shippng cost?
 
I know security doesn't come cheap; but perhaps that's the cost of having a secured anti-terror shipping method in place? Tell me about the sky rocketing of fuel and stuff affecting the ordinary Joe on the street.

Doesn't sound fair and I am with you on this one, that shipping shouldn't cost more than the material/goods in question.
 
Probably because SFO ships by UPS, and it would have to go by UPS Air, which is very expensive when shipping internationally. It might also be due to Spyderco having a distributor in Australia and wanting to encourage folks to buy locally. And, finally, it may just be a crock of s#!t. The chances of anything you are told on the internet being true are 50/50 at best.
 
If the shipping is too dear... find another supplier.
I buy Spyderco... either locally, of from US dealers - and I've *never* paid $50 shipping. Why are you buying direct from Spyderco [who incidentally, I think are the best knife production company in the world...] rather than their dealers?
 
I'm from Australia as well, I get mine from New Graham, around $US20 for USPS Global Express with tracking. Or $US10 via USPS Global Priority. $50 is way over the top.
 
SIRGALANT said:
its $50 usd to have spyderco ship you anything to australia

Hear-say is a terrible thing. How can a professionnal company say "anything"? Saying $50 for shipping is expensive is meaningless: what where you buying?
a delica? or a set of benchstones? :jerkit:
weight is a big factor.
USPS Global Express (insured, full tracking) or USPS Global Priority?

Finally, as The Deacon said, buy from Spyderco if you are in Golden, buy from a (reputable :rolleyes: ) dealer otherwise. That's what dealers are for, they will be cheaper in both product and shipping.
 
If the SFO ships an item to Austrailia by UPS it could well cost you $50 for shipping. UPS charges exhorbitant amounts to act as a customs broker when importing parcels from the USA into Canada. I've had them charge $20+ for brokerage fees in addition to normal shipping charges, sales tax and sometimes duty (if the country-of-origin of the item is listed). And I live on the border and can see the USA from my house :grumpy:

It's UPS brokerage fees that really increase the cost!

David
 
I'll second what you are hearing here. By example, I had two Zassenhaus coffee grinders that needed warranty service. I generally ship UPS. Their domestic cost is not terrible compared to USPS (United States Postal Service) and they pick up at my door. So when I needed to send these two grinders back to Germany, I went to UPS. I went through all their forms and scheduled a pick up when they (finally!) told me the cost would be $103 USD! Yikes. Almost as much as buying new ginders.... Cancelled the pickup immediately. I was about to try to figure out how to do these repairs myself when I thought "Just for the heck of it, I should price USPS." USPS rate (granted for SLOWEST SERVICE) was $8.80 USD!!! I was thrilled! YMMV but, for me, it's USPS for forgeign delivery.

Ken
 
yeah my millie came via us mail , only cost the bloke $6.50 us to post it to me , in a lovely envolope with bubble rap around the knifes box containing my new pride and joy
 
SFO and all of Spyderco ships internationally via UPS. We cannot ship via USPS for many reasons. Because of new rules and regs enacted following 9/11 we cannot ship directly from our headquarters through USPS. Meaning the packages have to be taken to a USPS office and shipped there. This step may not seem like much, but when you have a staff our size, it's quite a hit. Additionally, we've had numerous issues in the past with shipping internationally through USPS. Even with tracking, I can't tell you the number of packages that go missing.

As for UPS vs other carriers, we found the charges to be less with UPS than others and we have a good history with UPS and our packages arriving safely with the tracking to verify shipments when needed. To be honest in a lot of cases, when shipping internationally the charges can exceed $50, but we wanted to be as fair as possible, so in those instances, we eat the difference.

There is only one exception to this and that's when we ship to Military addresses (APO/FPO). Those have to go via USPS as there is no other carrier available. Our OIF/OEF programs use USPS out of necessity. Even then, we have missing packages every month.

Finally, yes we do encourage our international ELUs to support Dealers in their own countries whenever possible. One of the reasons for that is in the case of Warranty issues. Obviously we strive for there not to be any issues, but we're not perfect. When an issue arises internationally, our Distributors are prepared to act on our behalf and make sure the ELU is taken care of.

I hope this clarifies why we do what we do.

Kristi
 
tazkristi said:
yes we do encourage our international ELUs to support Dealers in their own countries whenever possible.
Kristi

that could be more expensive than add up $50 UPS fee…:(
FRN Endura here in Russia priced at ~$100……
Thanks God there's NGK!
 
kbuzbee said:
.... when I thought "Just for the heck of it, I should price USPS." USPS rate (granted for SLOWEST SERVICE) was $8.80 USD!!! I was thrilled! YMMV but, for me, it's USPS for forgeign delivery.

Ken


I was in a trial and a UPS Executive and a DHL Executive (under oath) said that the USPO was their most feared competitor and that the USPS did a very good job for the price.

Ever since (about 1999) I have used the post office for both domestic and international shipping and have been very happy.
 
caryyee said:
I'm from Australia as well, I get mine from New Graham, around $US20 for USPS Global Express with tracking. Or $US10 via USPS Global Priority. $50 is way over the top.

Lighthound ships the same way as NGK and charge $2 extra for international shipping of the Spydercos they have. This is on top of the domestic S&H fee. Usually works out at about the same price as NGK. They use USPS GPM unless one asks for USPS GE.

Since Spyderco use UPS $50 seems pretty close to cost. FedEx isn't any cheaper as far as I've seen.

Sverre
 
For what's it worth. I've sent probably 7 or 8 packages to Australia in the past few months, and I sent them all via USPS Global Express. Australia is one of the few countries that USPS guarantees safe postage to. If they can't guarantee it's delivery, they won't allow you to buy insurance for it. Try insuring a package to the middle east, and see how quickly they laugh at you.;) (OIF/OEF are not disappearing because of USPS, they're disappearing because of where they're being shipped)

All of my packages arrived safely in 7-10 days(normal days, not business days) and each cost me between $25-$30 depending on weight.

UPS is going to cost more because the tracking information is FAR more reliable than USPS. That alone is often worth the increase in price.

Then again, I don't ship on the same volume that Spyderco does, so my good experience may just be due to the fact that I haven't shipped enough to see one disappear. I trust Spyderco knows more about shipping rates and reliability than I do.
 
Global priority on most knives is 5.00.
Gobal express could be as much as 50.00
 
u812 said:
Global priority on most knives is 5.00.
Gobal express could be as much as 50.00
I've had many many knives sent from the US to New Zealand, the most it has ever cost is $15 US.:eek: The $50 price has stopped me even thinking about buying directfrom Spyderco, really would have liked a WTC knife but the postage would have increase my cost by nearly1/3:mad:
USPS Global Express is the way to go for most items, 5-10 days delivery, never lost anything and NZ Customs don't seem to open the parcels either.:D
Phil
 
yeah ok i have a better understanding of shipping now , thanks people. this wasnt an attack , merely an enquiry
 
Yep, people here recommend USPS. UPS and Fedex seems to incur customs fees, brokerage etc at the Australia end which the purchaser has to pick up in addition to the actual postage he's paid the seller. It's interesting to note that of all the packages I've sent over from the US to Australia, Global Priority seems to get here faster than Global Express, go figure as Global Express is meant to be the faster one ...
 
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