Hi, I’m Chris, the CTO over here at StationeryHQ. This has been a really exciting two weeks for us in the programming side of StationeryHQ.com.

Soon after launching the site, we started getting reports that the shipping was occasionally much more expensive – especially on small orders.

Since launching the site, we have reweighed all of our products to make sure our weights are accurate. We have reviewed how the old site does shipment quotes and how the new site does shipment quotes.

The big question was, “Are either site’s shipment quotes accurate?”

Before today, the answer was “Definitely not.” The new site was over charging in some instances and under charging in others. The old site was undercharging ALL USPS postage because it was using a 3 year old rate table. The UPS quotes on the old site were also wrong because we did not have accurate weights in for the products. Sometimes, the weights were off as much as 16x UNDER the actual weight. This meant that many of the most popular products were being offered USPS First Class when we could not send it that way. It also meant that the shipment quotes, especially on Priority Mail and 2nd Day or Overnight UPS, were significantly under our actual cost.

Today, we have actual weights in place on all products, based on re-weighing each item.

We always try to break even on shipping at StationeryHQ. We aren’t trying to make a profit, but we also want the prices to reflect our costs accurately (rather than incorporating the shipping costs into the product’s price).

In addition, I know a lot of you love the First Class shipping option on the old site, and it’s still available on both sites for orders light enough to travel that way. We will be looking to see what we can do to add back in a low cost shipping option for more orders. Jim (the GM), Mark (CEO), and I are all dedicated to offering as low cost shipping as we can!

We welcome your feedback on shipping rates. If you see something that looks really weird, please do contact us!