History and Rationale for Our Surcharge on United Parcel Service(UPS) shipments

We are painfully aware of how tight things are for everyone in today's economy. Even when things were good in the Nineties we always tried our best to not increase costs to our customers, many of whom have been with us since the beginning (1998). Therefore, FWIW (for what it's worth), we offer below a history and our rationale for a change which we have tried to avoid but which has become necessary if we are to keep our costs down:

1. Background for our decision to add UPS shipping surcharge:

When we started selling our A Packages of bulk kimono in 1998 we felt that it was easier for us as shippers and for our customers if we factored shipping costs into our selling price and have no charge for shipping of our bulk kimono packages. At that time UPS was very reasonably priced. As time went by, there were at first small UPS and Postal Service increases but we absorbed them rather than raise our prices. By the early 2000's we saw our own import and shipping costs rise often and steadily, but still we managed to absorb those costs. In fact, in 12 years we've only had one price increase for our A (and other) Packages, and that was a mere 50¢ a pound.

Furthermore, in order to reduce shipping costs we have even gone so far as to often use cartons recycled from our local wholesale stores (BJ's, Walmart) in an effort to reduce expenses and keep from raising product prices for our customers. Then, once oil began to spike in price, our import costs skyrocketed -- but still we did not raise our prices.

Which takes us to 2010: While the US Postal Service has had cost-of-living type rate increases, they've never been anywhere near the increases by UPS when you add UPS's various add-on fees. Now, under UPS's new system, when calculating a weekly residential pickup service fee (for the privilege of using UPS pick up), higher rates for residential deliveries, dimensional weight charges etc. -- when taking it all into account, as a small business we simply had to either raise our prices substantially, or drop UPS as our default shipper. We've had to choose the latter.

We've always loved the service of UPS and their tracking and web system are without peer; and, every UPS driver we've ever had has been more like a friend and another employee of ours -- but as United Parcel Service now seems to want to price the little guy out, after 12 years it is with regret that we're saying goodbye to UPS as an account-holding shipper.

2. Details of our new surcharge for any United Parcel Service (UPS) shipments under the "Shipping Included" Policy of YokoDana:

From now on all shipments will be shipped by default via US Postal Service as before -- no shipping charge to continental USA addresses. But, for someone preferring United Parcel Service we will be adding a shipping surcharge of 50 cents ($.50) per pound (net wt.) If you wish to have it shipped by United Parcel Service (UPS) you will need to add a note in the order form's comments field at bottom of order page.

(An example: A 10lbs A Package order would cost an additional $5.00, or, $105.00 + $5.00 surcharge = $110.00 when shipped to contiguous 48 United States by UPS.)

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