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Comment by drawkbox | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why we have the USPS Chinese subsidy? [1] Seems this makes the shipping fraud too easy as it is low cost.

It was a small epacket -- a special subsidized shipping option that the USPS offers Chinese merchants, effectively enabling them to ship a parcel from China to the U.S. for less than it costs to send that same parcel domestically

Due to the unbalanced pricing policies of the United Postal Union and subsidies from the U.S. Postal Service, it costs people in China virtually nothing to ship small packages to the U.S.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/05/how-the-...

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Because the USPS wanted to set US retail postal rates without negotiating with China Post and 150 others. Other countries' postal systems wanted the same autonomy.

So the postal union made a deal: The USPS decides how much to charge for postage to China, carries the mail to the Chinese border, China Post carries it from there, and the two split the USPS' retail price according to a set formula. Ditto for every other country combination. Simple. Saves a lot of negotiating.

But it means that if, say, the German postal system is able to send mail to the American border much more cheaply than the USPS to the German border, then the USPS will subsidise the Germans. Which is the case: I sent a heavy book from Munich to Seattle this summer for €17. Then the recipient sent it back, which cost a little over $50.

The difference is starker when you compare China and the US, but comparing Germany and the US is fair. Both are high-cost countries. I think the Americans should stop complaining until they have the prices down to German levels (or to an average of rich countries if you will).

> Both are high-cost countries.

This may still be true, if you're talking about some kind of broad categories of countries. But from your example, the US is then clearly a much-higher-cost country than Germany. There's a lot of crazy expensive stuff in the US, that wouldn't fly like that in Northwest Europe. Go grocery shopping. Get a cellular plan. Conversely, get a job. You'll see the differences. Everything is so freakin' inflated in the US, it's not even funny anymore (as if it'd ever be). (I grew up close to the German border.)

Here in the uk the mailers have a fancy method for making up the difference in pricing, they call it 'handling fee'.

So you pay postage from your parcel in country X, and on arrival in the UK, it's held, sometime for customs and/or VAT -- and then the carrier tries to charge you up to £20 for 'handling fee' to deliver it to you.

Basically what they do is try to hold you hostage to pay for the delivery, even tho you have paid postage already AND they are supposed to have an agreement with the oversea mailers about it.

It's really daylight robbery. And they all do it. Royal Mail, DHL, Fedex etc.

Can you contact the sender and tell them to sort it out? They are the courier's customer so really it's their problem to resolve. Just say "I never received my parcel" and let them figure it out.

I get those messages too. There are three options:

1. Pay the courier company to take care of customs.

2. Go to the customs office and do it yourself. I remember discussing with a customs officer what category a Soekris net4501 really was. ;)

3. Return the parcel.

The good news is that Amazon, Ebay, Aliexpress and some others deal with it now. Anyone who sells via Ebay can have the customs stuff processed by Ebay for a much more reasonable fee.

OK, so the issue is unpaid customs fees, which you can pay the courier to sort out for you. I thought they were demanding extra postage or something like that.

Say you order an USB-to-centronics adapter from China. Then the DHL/whatever courier brings it to you and says "you have to pay €1.07 VAT on that, and also a €25 handling charge to DHL for acting as a middleman between you and the customs office". That €25 stings.

This is done in Canada as well. It's frustrating when I've already paid $80 for shipping. What the hell is a handling fee, you crooks.

The problem here is that the countries doing this actually love it because it creates another unofficial barrier of entry.

> A big part of the explanation is a United Nations body called the Universal Postal Union. The UPU helps coordinate rates and standards between nearly every national postal system, and has been a crucial piece of global infrastructure since its founding in 1874 (it was absorbed into the United Nations only in the 20th century). But critics argue that the system now amounts to a subsidy for international shipping from developing countries and net exporters.

http://fortune.com/2015/03/11/united-nations-subsidy-chinese...

Funny how this sort of subsidy is how Ponzi schemes were partially inspired by

onzi received a letter from a company in Spain asking about the advertising catalog. Inside the envelope was an international reply coupon (IRC), something which he had never seen before. He asked about the IRC and found a weakness in the system which would, in theory, allow him to make money.

The purpose of the postal reply coupon was to allow someone in one country to send it to a correspondent in another country, who could use it to pay the postage of a reply. IRCs were priced at the cost of postage in the country of purchase, but could be exchanged for stamps to cover the cost of postage in the country where redeemed; if these values were different, there was a potential profit. Inflation after World War I had greatly decreased the cost of postage in Italy expressed in U.S. dollars, so that an IRC could be bought cheaply in Italy and exchanged for U.S. stamps of higher value, which could then be sold. Ponzi claimed that the net profit on these transactions, after expenses and exchange rates, was in excess of 400%. This was a form of arbitrage, or profiting by buying an asset at a lower price in one market and immediately selling it in a market where the price is higher, which is completely legal.[8]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi

If you’re an eBay seller, that advantage makes it nearly impossible to compete on a lot of cheaper products. Also, the return shipping is usually astronomical so a lot of buyers just end up stuck with merchandise they might otherwise return.

According to the article, this is not the enabling factor - the placing of an order from a fake account is. This order is what makes the spoofer able to leave the fake review; that someone actually gets something in the mail is more or less an artifact coming from the seller having to show that some transaction took place and it needs to look real.

edit: hmm, seems like they need a tracking number to show so it is not flagged and that is what's needed for this thing.

I think a better solution would be to lower the outrageous prices charged by the USPS to us.

If you want to send a 1oz 'package' to, for example, France, it will cost $13.50. It used to cost closer to $3.40, and then they doubled it overnight to $7, and now it is freakishly high.

Why is this? Because the USPS has a monopoly and is allowed to rob us!

The Postal Service can’t just raise prices as it sees fit. It needs approval from the Postal Regulatory Commission. Also they’ve had to pre-pay something like 30 years of retiree health benefits. You can send packages to France without using the USPS.

You can’t use Fedex or UPS or DHL?

International shipment of small parcels is very expensive via those carriers. Probably on the order of $50-100 for a small box.

Proving the ridiculousness of the claim that the USPS is a monopoly that extorts its customers.

Since the USPS has a legal monopoly on shipping below the price floor that applies to other carriers... that claim would appear to be completely correct?

Sure you can, but my understanding is that all non-USPS postal services must obey a legally mandated price floor, which prevents them from competing with USPS on cost.

If I'm not mistaken you have this backwards. USPS is the one subject to a price floor that's tied in some way to cost, since they don't have the profitability constraints that UPS/Fedex do.

EDIT: Never mind, there are apparently price floors enforced on both USPS and private postal companies.

Because the USPS has a monopoly and is allowed to rob us!

What monopoly? There are a number of private carriers providing international service; the USPS has no special market power. (Indeed, it's at a competitive disadvantage, because it's legally mandated to provide service to all domestic addresses, including remote ones that private carriers can refuse to serve.)

It is illegal for private delivery companies to deliver to mailboxes. Also, FedEx and UPS have universal delivery that EXCEEDS the U.S.P.S. For example, I live on a rural road and the postal service won't deliver to my home, but FedEx and UPS do regularly.

Can one make a separate mailbox dedicated to private delivery companies? Would it be legal for them to use it?

Yes; just get a lockbox to put near your door and clearly label it as for packages. The idea of a mailbox and the laws regarding it tend to be rather specific. For instance, stealing from a mailbox is a federal matter but stealing packages from your doorstep is a local police matter.

Sure you can. Newspapers do this in rural areas.

The postal service won't deliver mail to your mailbox or just packages to your door? I can see they see a difference but if they deliver mail to your box then I fail to see why they would refuse a package to your door.

It a nutshell, that's why I've stopped buying American* and just wait patiently for the 4-week free shipping from China.

*I'm Canadian.

Does the Canadian USPS equivalent have a similar treaty with China?

Postal rates aren't (in most cases) determined by bilateral treaties between governments. There's a single organisation that handles things for roughly the whole of the UN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union

Yes. But Canada is sloooooow. 4 weeks is being generous.

And Canada also called ePacket. It’s faster-ish.

It’s the Canada Post int’l processing plant and customs that have decided to be slow.

As an American, I can't blame you. I have noticed that the Chinese shipping is getting quicker.

I ordered two of these [1] from China on the 7th. Showed up on the 28th. Only 3 weeks! ($1.32 for two, shipped)

If I wanted to send one to Canada, it would cost $2.29 for postage (because is it a 'flat', so it is cheaper. If it was bulkier, it would cost $9.50).

[1] https://github.com/jdesbonnet/RCWL-0516

I've had stuff actually show up in a week from China (Actually my 3D printer - FLSun Cube was one of those items). Of course, I've been having stuff show up in about 4-6 weeks as of late.

That is some very impressive reverse-engineering and up-documenting (is that a word?) work, thanks for making it public.

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